Assisting Business Harmony Amongst the Generations

The Canberra Times featured HRMWEB in its Sunday edition with an article about family business and Gen Y - specifically how to enable successful succession planning when dealing with the next generation, who will soon be handed the reigns of the family business.

HRMWEB puts an interesting spin on this as it's a family business who has Gen Ys AS the first generation business owners. So the management team are (for now) less concerned about succession planning and more focused on helping other business to harness the skills of the Gen Y workforce - who are often considered a thorn in the side of Baby Boomer and Gen X business managers/owners.

Read on to see the full Canberra Times article and how HRMWEB is building better relationships between all the generations involved in a business!

A "win/win" for all the generations...

Intimately aware of the desires and needs of the upcoming Gen Y workforce HRMWEB have geared their staff management solution, easyEMPLOYER, to be a tech savvy, easy to use, flexible product that appeals to both the business owner trying to run their workforce and the dynamic and fast paced Gen Y worker who wants everything "now" and resents wasting time on things they see as being unnecessary.  

With a bit of innovative thinking and today's technology there's no reason why all the generations can't be catered to when building business solutions. And as there will always be multiple generations working together in any business (not only family businesses) it's something that affects all owners, managers, supervisors, employees etc - and as such it's important to address.

When "retro" isn't so cool...

Being told that something needs to be done in a certain way "because that's the way we have always done it" may have worked in the past but it simply doesn't wash with this new generation of workers. Rather than resent such an attitude businesses should take advantage of it and review all their processes regularly to make sure they are operating in the most effective and efficient way possible.  

Often business will keep the same practices and processes in place whist the business environment around them continues to constantly change.  In today's highly rapid pace of change doing something because its what was done 20, or 10, or even 2 years ago will weigh a business down and potentially cost it its competitive edge.  Those who are constantly looking for better ways to do business will be those that are utlimately successful.

Generation "WHY"...

And as for those Gen Ys - well they actually have a lot to offer business with what is sometimes considered a "bad attitude" of always asking "why? why? why?".  But it could be that the Gen Y "devils advocate" stance will shine a light on impractical, cumbersome business processes and practices that could be refined, streamlined and automated to pull a business out of the past and set it up for success well into the future.