Boom, Bust & Echo
April 22nd, 2008
In Canada, Boom, Bust & Echo (Amazon link here) is a bestselling business book that has people talking more than a decade after it was first published. The book is about demographics and how the demographic patterns in Canada and the United States are major forces in how businesses thrive or fail. As many of us know, the Baby Boomer generation is an enormous cohort with unprecendented buying power whose needs inform what companies bring to the marketplace. Following the Boomers comes:
1. The Bust Generation - a relatively small demographic sliver that is currently 25 - 40 years old.
2. The Echo Generation - a large cohort whose parents are the Boomer generation.
Many companies have considered the sales and marketing aspect of this demographic shift - the boomers are aging, rapidly reaching retirement in huge numbers - and with their buying power, looking for products and services that cater to their active-retirement lifestyles.
But an article in today’s Morning Newsbeat points out a poorly understood ramification of the coming Boomer retirement tsunami. The demographic group that follows boomers, the Bust generation, does not have sufficient numbers of workers to replace the Boomers - not only on the shop floor but all the way up the corporate ladder. The US government predicts that within 10 years, there will be a shortage of labor amounting to 10 million unfilled positions.
What this means is that companies must begin to plan for the shortage today. Retention programs and human-resource strategies that aim to keep quality employees are paramount. Folks who can run a facility, a department and distribution network will be fewer and farther between; the war for talent will be hard-fought. But companies preparing for this today will find themselves on much surer ground when the battle begins.
Entry Filed under: General
3 Comments | Add your comment
1. Rita | April 23rd, 2008 at 3:21 am
In the U.S., we usually call the generations:
*Baby boomers
*Gen-X
*Gen-Y
I’ve seen this argument over and over on the Internet. Some discussion is beginning about the fact that about 25 percent of boomers won’t have enough money to retire and others want to work; some part time and some in a new career. Human relations staff and managers need to be aware of these boomer needs and make plans that will fit the needs of older workers.
I write a blog for boomer consumers called The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide at http://boomersurvive-thriveguide.typepad.com.
Rita
2. Charles Fallon | April 23rd, 2008 at 8:33 am
Hi Rita,
Thanks for your comment. It raises a really good point:
As part of a long-term HR strategy, companies need to create working conditions that would encourage baby boomers to remain active in the workforce for as long as they need/want to.
In the past year, I have worked on two projects where, from the client side, a retired manager was pulled back in to act as project manager during major facility re-engineering. These retired managers bring enormous experience to the table, not just general work/project experience, but experience specific to the company, its culture and customer service requirements. They played critical roles in the effort.
As for the generation labels, we used the labels as defined by Foote in the book, Boom, Bust and Echo. He distinguishes the “Bust” generation from “Gen-Xers”, arguing that Gen-Xers actually form the tail of the baby boomers - meaning their parents came of age at or just after WW2. They are currently 38-45.
He makes that distinction only to point out that Gen-Xers have a much different career landscape than the Bust generation. Whereas the Bust generation have opportunities born of boomer retirement; Gen-Xers have had a career held in check by the fact that there are plenty of people one step ahead of them in the corporate ladder.
Anyway, just throwing that out as fodder for discussion!
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