NEN ROUNDTABLE:
TALKING ABOUT MY GENERATION. AND YOURS. AND THEIRS.
How and Why Age Matters in the New Human Services Workforce

This second in a series of NEN Roundtable Discussions follows a flood of recent articles and studies describing the work and life values of the five generations still active in the economy: the "greatest" generation, the "silent" generation, the Baby Boomers, Generation X and Generation Y. The last three are currently in the workforce in large numbers, with the Baby Boomers set to begin retiring soon. How well are the new employees getting along with the old? What can the generations learn from one another? What surprises — felicitous and otherwise — lie ahead? We asked three NEN members.

NEN: In thinking about the Gen X and Gen Y employees in your agencies, what generational differences leap out at you? Steve: Among my contemporaries, it's a mindset that if there's something important that needs to be done, it gets done somehow — you stay late or wake up at 4 in the morning with an anxiety attack or whatever. I don't encounter that in quite the same way with our younger staff. It may to some extent be a function of position, but it also seems related to a generationally defined life perspective. Yet I don't think the younger staff are less invested in the success of the organization — they just view their role in it as different. Judi: Work to live or live to work: I encounter this issue all the time. I started seeing it 9 or 10 years ago. I just couldn't understand how we were going to move forward with people who didn't want to invest the amount of time in the organization that I did. I since have come to think of myself as dysfunctional. It is a cleaner perspective that they're coming in with in regard to the balance between work and home. They're not shrugging the work off; they're scheduling it differently and holding their boundaries a bit firmer, which we in the Boomer generation could also benefit from. The people who are living to work, we tend to lose steam as we grow older. We do wake up 4 in the morning and type out the policy, then we come in tired and are bitchy with the staff. Andy: I want to take a little bit of a contrarian view. I'm not sure whether it's having a giant pool of people to sift through, but I have probably within my agency a good 8, 9, 10 folks in their late 20s and early 30s who are up at night and working weekends and investing their time in the agency. The one difference I see is that while they are motivated by the mission in the sense that I was — the helping mission — they also get a big kick out of the social entrepreneurial aspect of the work. I'm not sure I was looking for that, though it may have played out that way. Steve: We have people like that, too. But my sense has been that we can't nowadays assume as administrators that people are like that to the degree they were 15 years ago. I have to be a little more vigilant to spot those people. NEN: What's motivating the younger employees? Andy: It depends on who we're talking about. For the ones I hope will be there to take my job, it's to some extent about reframing the work as "good works" but also as work that has that entrepreneurial quality to it. If we can give people a sense of ownership of the project they're part of, it becomes more important and they're more invested in it. That's a key part for the ones who are really good. Then there are the other folks who don't make the cut as potential leaders, but they're good workers and they're in it for the opportunity to do good works and make some kind of minimal living. That's the problem — unless you're one of the few people who can make it into a managerial position, or get a degree in sociology or social work, it's hard to see human services leading you into a middle class life with a house and a car. Judi: One challenge we have here is that we have new staff coming in at very small jobs, 4-10 hours a week. In that situation, it's harder to see those people who can make a bigger commitment. The picture of our staff is that the majority of us in management positions are Boomers. We're the 20-hours-and-more people. The ones in the part-time positions are often trying to manage multiple jobs, so they can't commit beyond the specific hours they're scheduled to work. There's not an opportunity to give those people projects that might spur them on. In order to stay vital, we have to downsize, which means giving up some of those chances to spot new talent. NEN: So agencies themselves have changed along with the institutions of society. Steve: Looking at my parents and the parents of my younger associates, the assumption often was that there was one primary breadwinner and a spouse who worked a handful of hours at most and had primary responsibility for managing childrearing and household, so if the primary breadwinner worked 60 or 70 hours a week, there was an infrastructure in the home to support that. But now, there isn't necessarily another adult who can manage childrearing in the household, and that impacts the availability and willingness of employees to work long hours. Judi: Another thing is that you've got the working poor who can hardly afford to work because of the cost of child care. How can they justify putting in the extra hours when they have to pay so much back out for child care? Steve: On the flipside, around the work ethic question, I'm amazed at the willingness of some staff to be available around the clock for things that are almost trivial. I have staff in mid-level management positions who constantly have a phone at their ear, and would be flabbergasted to learn that anybody hesitated to call them at any time for any reason. NEN: So they've redefined how they're available. Andy: The problem with human services is that there's a certain amount of face time that's important; you can't do it remotely. NEN: What are you noticing about the very youngest segment of the workforce? Judi: They come in thinking that they're young, so they already know everything they need to know about youth development. I have to fight the resentment that I feel because of all the dues-paying that I did, and the life lessons that I learned still apply today. I watch these new youth workers and worry about them. I don't want them to launch off into a direction that's not going to benefit them or others. I don't want them to become disgruntled with the work, because I think they have a lot to offer. NEN: Like what? Judi: Young workers have a direct connection to youth, so we need them there to reach them. Youth don't want to be advised by a 50-year-old, unless it's through a person close to their own age. NEN: The younger generation has better work-life boundaries, we're saying. So are they happier? Judi: I come from a generation that didn't expect to be satisfied unless we were effecting change somehow. Lots of young people today are satisfied, but it's with their lives and their own nucleus, not with society at large. Andy: There's something to that. One of our challenges — and I think it's an industry challenge — is, who are we getting? There's been a status change for human services. I don't know that we're getting the best and brightest anymore; our field isn't seen as where things are happening. For a time we were that. Now, if you go get that social work degree, you're going to end up with a debt load as high as a law degree, but without the ability to pay it back. Frankly if the money were better and the status were better, we'd attract a different kind of person to the field. We can get some college grads in the direct-care positions, but a lot of times they've had just a little college, and we'll pay for more college to build them up, and at that point they either stay or take off, and we lose our investment. Steve: I'm an anachronism — I've been with this agency for 20 years. My assumption when I came here was that there was a great possibility that I'd retire from here. People today not only have a few different jobs in their lives, but a few different careers. Somebody coming in now may not think of it as permanent — they're going to do this, then leave and have a tech career, then a sales career. I think human services needs to be much more strategic to take advantage of this change. It used to be that people came into human services because of the healing nature of the profession, and then got hooked. They couldn't leave and feel okay about themselves, even if they weren't making the money they wanted. Now it's hard to attract people into the field when they can't make the money they need to sustain the lifestyle they're used to. Judi: People coming into the workforce now who are making low pay, and without the thought that they're going to retire there, sometimes stick around anyway and become very dissatisfied. They can't understand why there aren't resources in the organization to do what they want to have done. It's even true for the people working just under me. It took me a long time to get my direct reports to understand that we're a nonprofit but we still have to meet a bottom line. It's a business we're running here. Andy: It's about the culture of the agency. One of the things I liked about my agency when I joined was that we did see ourselves as an agency with a strong social justice mission, but we also had to know the difference, as we say here, between a penny and a dollar. One of the things we expect all our program directors to do is manage an Excel spreadsheet. We push the responsibility for managing the program budget down to that level. If we can get that culture closer and closer to entry level, and we can help new employees see the budgetary stuff as part of the mission — to figure out how to deliver excellent services for reasonable resources — I think some of the younger people will buy into that idea. NEN: Lots of people are saying that since entering youth workers grew up in a child-centered, self-empowering culture, they're demanding and over-confident. True? Steve: We see that. A part of it's certainly problematic, but I'm not sure it's such a terrible liability. A lot of our staff come in with more confidence than I think they should have, but that's not all bad. I don't find that I'm constantly being called upon to answer questions that I think they really know the answer to, when it's really just about, "Am I okay?" At the same time, the younger staff demand recognition. The older staff want it and need it as much, but they're not as assertive in asking for it. Andy: I actually hate the idea of "Employee of the Month," because I always thought, well, so everybody else is not employee of the month. But I have a lot of staff now who are actually very good at putting incentive plans in place or rewarding people on the spot, and they report back that it's really effective. It's helpful for morale. So I basically have to get over my "shut up and get to work" thing and let people manage the workforce that they have. I agree that the demand for recognition is not all bad. It's worthwhile to be reminded that you're doing a good job. That said, I'm coaching a Little League team and I refuse to — well, not everybody is going to get a trophy every time they go to bat. They're going to get feedback. Steve: One of the things I think is critical with this workforce is explaining why decisions were made and why things are being done they way they are. The older staff, myself included, are much more likely to defer to institutional judgment, so I end up explaining myself to younger staff much more than I do to their older counterparts. If I make a decision, and it's only three-quarters conceptualized, it's okay, I can move on from it. But with younger staff, if it's not 100 percent conceptualized, I flounder in discussing it with them. As administrators, that keeps us more honest, more planful, more thorough in how we proceed with things. But it's a pain in the neck. Andy: I strongly agree with that. Judi: Bringing people into the process as strongly as possible so they have that buy-in is almost required now. It is a pain in the neck — it requires scheduling, figuring out how to get feedback, and then deciding what to do with it. What I find myself justifying is why I don't do something that's been recommended. It's time-consuming. NEN: So how do we adjust? Steve: Younger staff don't show the kind of deference to age and institutional status that my generation does. I think it's important for us to recognize and accept that. In fact, I think our own ability to take ourselves a bit less seriously, be more self-effacing, be more playful, etc., can go a long way in bridging relationships with younger staff. NEN: What will the workforce of the future look like? Judi: I wonder if the workplace will become depersonalized. Younger workers need individual recognition, and crave that. They might end up paying attention to the big picture and not the small details, so things become sterile and the client has less connection to individuals in the organization. It becomes very technology-oriented, very electronic. Steve: I'm more optimistic, but I can't say why. Young people will continue to bring resources that are different. It may not be willing to work until 9 o'clock at night, but it may be a willingness to step outside their role in the organization because it is helpful to do so. It'll be a very different workplace. The long-term sustained relationships that feed us are less likely to be the case in 15 years. What will substitute for that I'm not sure. Maybe the ease with which young people seem to make relationships, even when those relationships are not as enduring. Andy: But where are the bodies themselves actually going to come from? We're talking about an industry growing in staffing needs 33 percent over the next 10 years. We can't outsource the jobs, but we can bring people in from other countries — are we going to be doing more of that? This NEN Roundtable discussion was conducted by Nancy Jackson and Melanie Wilson. Comment at mwilson@nenetwork.org.

Andy Pond President and CEO JRI Boston, Mass. (1,500 staff) Judi Kirk Direction of Health Promotion Services YWCA of Central Massachusetts Worcester, Mass. (250 Staff) Steve Girelli Vice President, Education, Child Placement & Group Care Klingberg Family Centers New Britain, Conn. (450 staff)