Investing for the next generation
Posted On August 21, 2014
Financial advisors are struggling to find the best way to connect with young investors. According to Forbes, younger generations are taking matters into their own hands – creating businesses that adapt to the Millennial way of thinking. These savvy entrepreneurs are taking the principles of DIY investing and marrying them to financial advisory to recreate the investment experience so that it mirrors the values of the younger generations. Wealthfront, an investment company highlighted in the piece, offers a “refer-a-friend” bonus that comes in the form of an increased cap on the assets managed at no cost. While older generations would… Read More
Categories: Financial Services, Generation Y / Millennials
A few words on business clutter
Posted On August 19, 2014
An article in The Economist this month got me thinking about how different generations value time. The piece talks about three types of business clutter – organizational clutter, meeting clutter and email clutter. None of these is a shocking revelation to anyone who works in a large organization. The demands on time are significant, and often not related specifically to the task at hand. In fact, a colleague recently shared that when her boss asked for yet another report, she had to tell him “I can do the report, or I can do the work that the report is about,… Read More
Categories: Workplace
Texting while driving…golf carts
Posted On August 14, 2014
Golf courses have a problem. Young professionals simply aren’t hitting the links with the same regularity as their Xer and Boomer predecessors. The New York Times reports that in 2013, only 22 percent of travelers under 33 played golf when they stayed at a resort, compared with 42 percent of baby boomers. And resorts are working hard to determine the best way to attract them. From the article: Resorts are … making changes that would have been unthinkable even a decade ago, adding speakers to golf carts and Wi-Fi access on the course, building high-tech training centers and miniature golf… Read More
Categories: Entrepreneurship, Generation Y / Millennials, Product Design
Frustrated by a lack of initiative from young employees? Blame the rubric.
Posted On August 12, 2014
One of the recurring themes in my discussions about working with Millennials is that you can’t hold them accountable for what they don’t know they should do. And one of the frequent counterarguments is that they need to think for themselves, show a little initiative. A college professor recently shared this article with me, which may shed some light on how your young employees came to be so dependent on being given very clear expectations: the rubric. If you have school-age children, chances are you’ve seen a rubric – it’s basically a checklist of assignment requirements, including how many points… Read More
Categories: iGen, Parenting
Millennials waxing nostalgic
Posted On August 7, 2014
A friend told me about the new Miranda Lambert tune and it made me chuckle. At the ripe old age of 30 years, Lambert is a Millennial. Yet here she is singing about the good old days of hard work and paying your dues. And I did my homework with good ol’ Google – Lambert isn’t just singing a lyric written by a Nashville old-timer; she wrote it. The chorus is especially amusing for someone who was only 15 when the Internet went mainstream: Hey, whatever happened to waitin’ your turn Doing it all by hand, ‘Cause when everything is… Read More
Categories: Generation Y / Millennials, Workplace
Gen X – stuck in the middle again
Posted On August 5, 2014
The numbers show it. And so do the conversations. Generation X is stuck in the middle. In “10 things Generation X won’t tell you” MarketWatch author Quentin Fottrell delivers a fairly thorough assessment of why Gen X is “poor, ignored and jaded.” Gen X numbers roughly half to two-thirds of its generational peers. Depending on whose statistics you use, there are about 49 million Xers compared to 75 million Boomers and 89 million Millennials. No wonder people aren’t paying as much attention anymore. But it’s more than that – Xers have been around a while. They were the thorn in… Read More
Categories: Generation X, Succession Planning, Work, Workplace
Searching for role models, Millennial women still come up empty
Posted On July 31, 2014
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg made big waves with her book, Lean In. But a recent study of Millennials, conducted by Bentley University’s Center for Women in Business, seems to agree with her assertion of an ambition gap among female workers. According to the study, while nearly 20% of Millennial women seek to emulate women leaders in their companies, another 20% have “no interest in becoming a leader at my current company.” Of course that leaves a good majority floating somewhere in the middle. It’s even more interesting when you apply the assumptions these Millennials are making about the women CFOs… Read More
Categories: Generations, Parenting, Work, Workplace
Truth in advertising vs. telling them what they want to hear: A recruiter’s dilemma
Posted On July 29, 2014
The Millennial workforce rivals Boomers in size, but not necessarily in availability. This creates an interesting conundrum for recruiters. While there should be more supply than demand (and in some industries there certainly is), companies are still competing hard for the best talent. Those with traditional business models, such as public accounting, are particularly at odds with the Millennials’ more relaxed approach to work. How do you entice with promises of work-life balance in a business with a “busy season” that has young employees averaging 60+ hour work-weeks? Very carefully. Maybe the balance isn’t about the number of hours worked… Read More
Categories: Work, Workplace
Rules aside, your employees are talking money
Posted On July 29, 2014
A new LinkedIn study on relationships at work is making HR directors across the country cringe. But not for the reason you might think. Despite many companies having direct rules prohibiting it, more than two-thirds of Millennials are comfortable sharing personal information—including salary—with their coworkers. What’s fueling younger employees to commit the ultimate faux pas? The potential reasons are many. Millennials are, in general, more liberal in their thinking. They don’t hold as strictly to social norms and traditional boundaries. The internet certainly plays a role – this is a generation fully accustomed to revealing private information to strangers, so… Read More
Categories: Generation Y / Millennials, Work
Can early financial literacy indicate future success? If so, look out.
Posted On July 24, 2014
According to an international report on financial literacy, recently released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, today’s teens are ill-equipped to make much more than basic spending decisions. And this could be a problem. Financial planning demands are increasingly complicated. While Matures, and to some extent Boomers, were able to supplement pensions and corporate retirement plans with some personal financial planning, Xers, Millennials and iGen know that they are on their own. But has education kept pace with needs? It seems not. The OECD report indicates there is work to be done, with more than 1 in 6… Read More
Categories: Financial Services, iGen, Wealth