I had the pleasure of attending the Agile After 5’s which happened to be a breakfast this morning in Auckland. 200 people came along to the event and we heard from Steve Shaw.
One part of the presentation caught my attention. It was around the skills we are looking for in the Contact Centre space, in dealing with text and having the nous to reply to business emails. No real surprises there, but I believe that our Generation Y workforce are learning these basic communication skills at school anyway so it should just be part of what a manager is looking for every time they recruit.
Do we need to stop hyping up how we treat Generations Y’s.? We give them expectations, boundaries, objective, coaching and development plans so they can succeed. But that’s what we’ve been doing for years for every worker, do we really need to give Gen Y’s more attention than they already have.
I did enjoy Steve’s take on defining retirement though. He says that it is already starting to look and feel different for every one. ‘Gliding retirement’ is my new buzz word, work a few years, then have a few years off, travel, study, care for children, then glide out of retirement for a few years. I love the concept. Lets get the government to add that to the Flexible Working Arrangement Act! Oh dear, I don’t think the Workforce Planners and HR staff will support me at this stage!
I enjoyed the morning and Steve’s thoughts, he had some good general statistics around USA technology and texting, facebook and myspace. It was well worth getting up early this morning to attend.