Baby Boomers

This morning, I heard some alarming and troubling statistics; 16% of the baby boomer generation says they are ready for retirement and 43% say they have less than $10K saved for retirement. The recession has delayed the retirement plans of the average baby boomer by about 9 years.  Two thirds of all health care costs are incurred after the age of 60 and health care costs/insurance is the #1 source of financial concern to retirees, despite medicare and medicaid.

2010 Trends Continued… Flatter Organizations

A few months ago, we discussed 4 macro level trends anticipated in the next decade from a human capital perspective and last week, I discussed a micro trend. Continuing the dialogue, this week is about organizational design models. There continues to be a surging of unique trends towards how organizations are designed. The traditional hierarchical models of a pyramid (boss at top, workers at bottom) or even matrix models traditionally found in service businesses are disappearing.

Getting ready for 2010

It has been a long year for most of us.  The overwhelming majority of us have had a challenging year balancing the dynamics shifts of the workplace and the marketplace. In just about all conversations that I have had with folks from all over the world, there quite possibly has not been a more anticipated year end like 2009 – we all seem to be ready for 2010.  This optimism (an emotional state) is quite different than what most of us felt just 12 months ago when we had no idea how bad things were going to get with the incessant bad news that greeted us each day. The next few weeks, I will be discussing some trends that I am hearing across the board for 2010. 

2010 Trends: Multiple Generations – Baby Boomer Exodus

This week’s blog covers the fourth and last trend for the next decade. It is yet again another topic we have discussed before – multiple generations in the workplace and the pending exodus of the baby boomers.  This subject, discussed heavily prior to the recession, has lost much attention. The recession, after all, has forced many baby boomers to delay their retirements. But studies continue to show that these delays are just that … a delay.

2010 Trends: Technology

The last two weeks we have discussed trends for the next decade in the human capital and professional development space. We explored exiting the recession and globalization. The third trend is, again, not a new one. And we have discussed this before.  We have talked about studies that show how “connected” we have become and will continue to be, all leveraged by very powerful collaborative technologies – both on the application side (iPhone’s ad: there’s an app for everything) and on the hardware side (just the number of devices that human being have and that are connected to each other is approaching 15 Billion).

2010 Trends: Globalization

Last week I discussed the first of the four trends I see that are going to significantly impact the human capital landscape – recession recovery. This week, I’d like to discuss globalization in a different context from that of the past 20 plus years.

2010 Trends: Recession Recovery

I will be speaking at a number of events in the next 12 weeks and last week I was a guest on a show that covered the “workplace landscape” of the next decade. I’m sure most of you are in the midst of planning for 2010 budgets and are wrestling with what is critical, what is outdated, what is relevant, what is new/old, etc. It is my perspective that there are four major macro-level trends that are shaping some of the best thinking and planning for human capital professionals, especially in the context of professional development and talent management.  In the next four weeks, I will discuss each one. The first one is what I am calling Recession Recovery.