Is there a generational difference on work/life balance?
At left, Arroyo and DiversityInc’s Luke Visconti. Below,
from left: Malveaux, Galinsky. At bottom: Shi
up and you can’t
move up? And
the boomers’
demographic is
different. What
kind of perks
will aging
boomers value?
The eldercare is a
bigger issue than
the childcare
issue and I think
it is all driven by
economics. And
frankly, given
some of the
labor-market realities, one might suggest that
companies invest and involve themselves more
in training younger people, especially younger,
nontraditional populations such as people of
color, than investing in or ensuring that your
65-year-old has another five years.
retiring and then you come back
working a thousand hours a year and
it won’t hurt your pension. Another
example, a hospital in Richmond has
people who used to be working there
and now they are coming back and working
one or two days a week in the lab and doing
blood tests or things like that. I was at a hospital recently where they had a woman who was
the head of nursing in the ER, and she came
back to be a patient’s advocate and she knew
everyone. And it’s really a matter of thinking
creatively on how not to lose talent. She likes
her job much better now.
Malveaux: Will Gen X and Gen Y think
that boomers get preferential treatment? We
already have a series of generational issues—
things like leadership succession and other
kinds of things, in some cases there are shortages that will justify making changes, but in
other cases there are not shortages, so you keep
the 65- to 70-year-old on longer. What is the
impact for the 35-year-old looking at moving
Arroyo: There are about 77 million baby
boomers in the workplace and many of them
are disenchanted with the way their careers
have turned out. Some of them are finding out
that they are not going to become CEOs in
the next five years and they realized in the
meantime that they missed a lot of family time
as well and they realized they can’t get it back.
So from a corporate perspective, what we can
do is the realization of what I talked about
before—flex path. That, yes, you might not be
the next CFO or CEO, but you have been
