Good morning!

Very few management challenges are more frustrating than investing six to twelve months in a new hire — introducing, orienting, teaching, training, evaluating, reviewing, affirming, critiquing, delegating, and rewarding — only to have the employee decide that the job "is not the right fit" and leave.

Frustrating, and expensive: first-year attrition will cost at least 25% and as much as 75% beyond the employee's compensation for a position of even moderate complexity.

The lack of "fit" could be attributable to a variety of issues, including a failure to bridge the generation gap.

On the Friday after Christmas, I began reading Workforce Crisis, a book which I had purchased several weeks earlier after attending a seminar presented by one of its authors, Tammy Erickson. On page 100, there was Jenna, effectively described by the authors in a section called "Portrait of the Young Worker," as

• "The first large generation of latchkey kids… on their own from a young age…
• "Accustomed to having significant latitude and responsibility…
• "Cherish[ing] individual freedom and decision making…
• "Tend[ing] to be 'tribal,' with close relationships to a select but changeable group of peers…
• "Independent and highly networked, both personally and technologically … technology is not an occasional tool, but a constant extension of themselves…
• "Informal and situational and much less structured than older generations…
• "Tend[ing] to experiment from the start, to try things and learn what works."

O.K., I thought. That sounds like my own three twenty-somethings. As college grads, like Jenna, would any of them want her job? It requires fixed hours, being tied to a desk most of the day, responsiveness to everyone in the office, being the sole (low-level) generalist among a group of specialists, having little apparent opportunity for internal advancement, and having no outlet for her creative talents. What young college-educated worker would gravitate to that job? Probably not my kids, and not Jenna.

Four pages later, in a section headed "What Young Workers Want from Employers," the authors pointed out:

"Given their independence and libertarian leanings, they expect to be treated individually, they want flexible schedules, they know that their careers belong to them (not their employers), and so they value knowledge and skill more than tenure. Given their ambition, they want to contribute quickly, not work in the background…. Young people are accustomed to being marketed to, and to morphing the rules to suit the situation, and so they want to be heard on the job, they want frequent and useful feedback, and they expect to make their work fit in with other life commitments and pursuits. Since they tend to be tribal and socially networked, they want sociable workplaces, they want to connect with others (including mentors)."

Yes, that is what my kids and their cohort are looking for and finding. These weren't the priorities for my generation at their age, or even now. Many of us have only come relatively recently to the notion that a key ingredient to a successful career is effective marketing — of oneself. And most have had to experience at least one unexpected termination before coming to grips with the fact that extended employment with one company is now the great exception.

So what do the authors advise my technology client (a member of my age cohort) to do in order to retain young workers? They emphasize "three basics, corresponding to what young employees insist on:

1. "A thoroughly engaging workplace, featuring collegiality, teamwork, fun, and most fundamentally, democratic participation.
2. "Ample opportunity to learn and grow, including assignments that expand skills and the leeway and mobility to try one's hand at a variety of activities.
3. "Attentive management, where the direct manager not only appreciates individual employees' points of view but also attends to the employee's needs and progress and explicitly encourages — and is accountable for — retention."

Jenna is off in pursuit of a career in urban design, public policy and planning. She plans to spend eight months expanding on her part-time free-lance design work, handling a variety of assignments before enrolling in graduate school in September.

In the meantime, we have hired a "mid-career" woman as a successor to Jenna. The authors of Workforce Crisis say that we can expect her cohort to be "motivated, flexible, and people oriented… [with] valuable accumulated experience and knowledge, and more soft skills and customer-service orientation than the younger cohort. Among their potential weaknesses are a distrust of leadership and tendency to be self-absorbed."

Clearly, I need to keep reading.

In a second-floor walk-up above a retail shop in Devonport, across the harbor from Auckland, New Zealand, my wife Annie and I last week discovered The Department of Doing. Curious about the name, we wandered in to the open office and were warmly greeted by Richard Hollingum, the Director of Doing, and three of his associates.