Older companies look to woo, and keep, younger workers
'Unlike their parents, many in their 20s, 30s, even 40s, relish skipping from job to job

Sunday, June 26, 2005

By Pamela Gaynor, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Every couple of months for the past year, Ed Karpinski and about 10 colleagues have set aside some company time for their book club meeting. Shareholders needn't worry: The Duquesne Light Co. group isn't spending office hours plumbing the Western canon or perusing any of Oprah's picks.

Karpinski, the electric utility's general manager of organizational development, gets his colleagues together to talk about some of the latest management literature. The goal is to use the books to brainstorm about cultural changes the 120-year old utility must make to recruit and retain younger workers as an aging work force turns the pages in its last chapter of employment.

It's not a small consideration for a company whose roots go back more than a century, and it's not one that it is confronting alone. Management experts contend that, perhaps more than others, industrial-era companies will face challenges luring and keeping young workers as looming baby boom retirements shrink the labor pool and heat up competition for employees.

Not only do many older manufacturers and utilities have stodgy images to overcome, they often have less flexible corporate policies and management styles to match -- characteristics that don't much impress younger workers who often seek jobs that fit their lifestyles and interests and think nothing of switching around if they can find something better.

Workers in their late 20s to 40, known as Generation X, and workers 26 and younger, known as Generation Y, "will not tolerate" the same kind of "command and control" management practices that prevailed in their parents' day, said Judith E. Glaser, a New York-based organizational development consultant and author. Her new book, "Creating We," dissects behaviors and attitudes that make for -- or break -- a collaborative corporate culture.

"There's enough evidence to show that younger workers, whether Gen X or Gen Y, have different values around commitment to work'' than their parents "and around what demands of the organization and their superiors they'll put up with," said David DeLong, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AgeLab and author of "Lost Knowledge: Confronting the Threat of an Aging Workforce."

Management experts said young workers and those just approaching mid-career want more of a voice in what's going on in their workplaces than many of their baby boom forbears expected.

They're more skeptical of large organizations than many baby boomers and have less enthusiasm for the corporate world in general, said Dave Bowman, a human resource consultant with Los Angeles-based TTG Consultants and author of an article on the subject titled "Are You Ready for Radical Change?"

Younger workers, Bowman said, want more autonomy, more immediate praise and rewards for their work than their predecessors and "fewer regulations that stifle individuality" of expression or dress. They see freewheeling high-tech companies as model cultures where "there are no coats and ties and you come in when you want as long as you get the work done," he said.

Flexible schedules may not be possible at all companies, particularly utilities and heavy manufacturers, whose normal operations -- not to mention emergencies -- can require 24/7 staffing.

That makes it all the more important for their managers "to be much more motivating, much more empowering and much less directing" than has been customary, Bowan said.

Industrial-era companies, in general, have their work cut out for them, he said, adding that Duquesne Light's attempts to prepare itself for change could give the utility a leg up on many of them.

"In many manufacturing companies and old line industries, you've got entrenched culture," Bowan said. "It speaks legions about top management at Duquesne Light [for them] to say 'We need these changes.' "

From Duquesne Light's view, the realities of a generational shift already are setting in and could ramp up quickly. Up to half of the company's 1,400 employees are expected to reach retirement age by the end of the decade.

Long accustomed to employees who were content to build 30- or 40-year careers at the company "as long as there was work to be done and we paid a fair wage," Duquesne Light has seen some new recruits leave in as little as six months, said Joe Belechak, senior vice president and chief operating officer. "That's fairly new for us."

Younger workers, he observed, "don't care if they have 10 or 12 jobs in the course of a career. They see that as exciting."

Their thirst for varied experience is understandable, Belechak said, "but for an employer, especially in an industry where you have to have a base-level of expertise, it can be a challenge."

"I think going forward we should plan for that," he said. "Unless we move them around [within the company], they'll get bored and leave."

Many workers also will be more equipped to do so, Belechak added. Even linemen now come to the company with associate's degrees and, like other blue collar workers, increasingly require computer and information technology skills that are transferable to other industries, he said.

Among other dilemmas that come with younger workers, "Work-life issues are huge now," Belechak said.

Whereas linemen a generation ago "wanted all the overtime you could give them because they were the only breadwinner," they sometimes now "have spouses who make more money than they do," Belechak said.

"They're the ones who have to get the kids" after school or day care, he added. "Their priorities are different now."

For all of the problems those differences may pose, Belechak said he also sees the upside.

"There's better diversity" than there was even 10 years ago and "it brings great perspective when you have people who have been other places coming in."

Moreover, Belechak said the generational shift affords "an opportunity to change the way we staff and manage the business" as well as a "huge opportunity to create cultural change in the workplace."

Already there have been changes on the management front, he said. "We've probably taken out two or three levels of management in the past several years."

The way managers are chosen also has changed. "It used to be that subject experts were first in line. Now, I think we look more at leadership skills," Belechak said.

Karpinski, who brought the book club together, "is an example," he said, crediting him with "tremendous people skills."

Karpinski's position also is a newly created one, intended to help Duquesne Light take the steps necessary to replenish its work force and foster the cultural adaptations needed to accommodate the inevitable wave of newcomers.

A 34-year Duquesne Light veteran who sports a beard and an ear stud and holds a degree in organizational leadership, Karpinski worked his way up from "cleaning manholes" through technical and supervisory positions. Before taking on his new post earlier this year, he was general manager of customer service.

Like Belechak, Karpinski also sees generational differences in the utility's newer hires.

Younger workers aren't inclined to accept authority or instruction without question, he said.

With many, "There is a 'Why' on everything we try to train for," he said. "Command and control doesn't work at all. They're not accepting of it just because you say it."

What he does notice is that younger workers seem to better absorb the reasons behind something they're being trained to do as they mull them over with peers.

Dressed casually at a recent interview, Karpinski waxed philosophical about the generational differences but passed no judgment on them.

"I wouldn't say it's for the worse or the better," he said. " I think it can be turned in the right direction. We just haven't learned yet how to lead it."