A recent study (February 2008) of CSC’s Leading Edge Forum highlighted the question of inter-generational diversity within IT business. Is it an opportunity or a challenge?

IT organizations are about to be hit by a brain drain of experienced managers and workers who are nearing retirement. On the other hand, the demand for young IT workers is outstripping supply. More than that, not enough candidates have training in traditional technical disciplines and too few possess requisite business knowledge and relevant interpersonal skills. In spite of that, younger IT workers are demanding and getting increasingly higher levels of compensation that exceed the budgets of even large IT groups.

And when younger workers are recruited, there can be a generational disconnect between them. Four generations are distinguished among IT employees:

• Traditionalists (’50-’60) – trust in authority, rule makers, structured
• Boomers (’60-’70) – idealistic, anti-authoritarian, rule-breakers
• GenX (’80-’90) – independent, individualistic
• Millenials (post – 2000) – comfortable with diversity

Table 1. Generational change in the IT workforce is creating important new opportunities and challenges for IT organizations

While many IT departments are dominated by senior staff, some have workers from four different generations.  The challenge for leaders is to leverage the various positive characteristics of different generations of workers, and to minimize the negative attributes of each group. The study concluded that IT organizations must reinvent its workforce strategy and practices to attract and retain the talent it needs in the future.
If you are a HR director in an IT organization, what solutions would you propose to this problem? How are you managing inter-generational diversity?