Interview: Linda Duxbury

Elisa Moolecherry: In many companies, it’s common for people from several generations to work together. The staff may range from the Veteran Generation, through the large group of Baby Boomers, across Gen X employees, to the youngsters of Gen Y. But the world of work has changed rapidly in past decades. How has this had an effect on workers of various ages? For the answer to this question, we spoke to Canadian Linda Duxbury, a professor at the Sprott School of Business at Carleton University in Ottawa. We asked her if the recent recession affects the generations in the workforce in different ways:

Linda Duxbury: As we move into this new workforce, there’s going to be a really interesting situation going on. There’s going to be a lot of people who can’t find work. And those people can’t find work because they don’t have the skills. A lot of the manual redundant jobs you know that have been replaced by technology but the real trick is for every job we replace with technology, we add another four high-skilled jobs — the engineer who needs to program it, the technologist. And so we’re going to have a bunch of people who are unemployable and at the same time, we’re going to have a bunch of jobs that we can’t find people for. I just, I’m just I’m seeing so many mistakes happening right now because of this recession. I’m just seeing talent walk out the door, I see talent being pushed out the door, especially Gen X and Boomer talent, and then in two, three years, you know what? You’re not going to be able to get them back, you’re going to be able to get their physical presence, but you’re never going to be able to get their passion.

Elisa: Learn about workplace changes and improve your career skills with Business Spotlight magazine and audio. Or visit the Careers section on our website at www.business-spotlight.de. And come back next week — we bring you a new podcast every Tuesday.