Guest post by Pete Miller, a retired executive from the aerospace and defense industry, who’s created several volunteer networks to help veterans, law enforcement and other first responders with post-traumatic stress syndrome, traumatic brain injury and other issues related to their service.
Passing The Torch
Let’s face it. It’s time for us baby boomers and pre-baby boomers to pass the human rights torch to a new generation. We’ve had a good run. We raised the issues, raised awareness, and we have made some progress, although there is still a long way to go. In fact, we have barely scratched the surface on what needs to be done.
I see a glimmer of hope in future generations because business and life circumstances are rapidly changing. I will discuss these changes and their perceived impact below.
Spurred on by these changes, I believe that generations X (Latchkeys), Y (Millennials) and Z (Zoomers) have what’s in them to really make progress in giving the individual a greater voice in their right to life and liberty.
Here’s why I think today’s newer generations can and will make real progress.
History of Human Rights Awareness by Generation
But first, let’s look back to how human rights thinking developed over time.
Our grandparents lived during the Industrial Age. Work became less individualistic as working in factories began to replace working on the family farm. It was a rough start. People were just commodities, a part of the business equation. Rise of labor unions was the “human rights” of the time.
Our parents had it even tougher. Living through a major depression and a second world war, it’s easy to see why most people were glad just to have a job when the war ended. Soldiers came home wanting to get back to normal. They married, bought a house and started to raise and support a family.
That’s when we, the baby boomers, came along. The industrial age was still in full swing and the economy was booming with post-war spending. For the first time in history people had enough money to give their children a higher education. They also wanted their children to be better off than they were, so they encouraged us to go to college to get an education that would lead to a higher paying career instead of just a job. Until then, most people had not more than a high school education, if even that.
Thus, we had the tools and time to begin thinking about how people were being treated at work and in society. But it has been tough to get buy-in because business and society continued to focus on economies that continued to grow worldwide, continuing to discount the rights and wellbeing of their employees.
We began to make progress on human rights with the civil rights movement, Woodstock and other similar actions. But our youth and our energy were sapped by the Vietnam War, and although social media gave us great access to more people in different cultures across the globe, we as a generation failed to completely buy into these new tools. We say we did, but most of us brought in only what we needed in the workplace and in our daily lives.
Generation X and The Information Age
We had kids who became known as Generation X. At the same time, the industrial revolution began to give way to the information age. Eventually social media came along, if only in an elementary form.
Computers, the internet and social media brought our world together. They gave the world the tools to begin thinking out of the box, out of our comfort zone and to communicate with people worldwide. But the vast majority of people are still focused on going to college and getting a high paying job.
We missed the major benefits to the overall society of newer tools, such as the internet and social media, because of two reasons. Because our industrial age training didn’t include these tools, our generation lacks understanding and fears them. I also believe that we are being targeted by organizations who focus on negative issues to prevent us, or at least slow us down, from using these tools, because these organizations fear obsolescence.
One-Third of Earth’s Total Population Use Social Media
When people think about social media, they think about contacts, followers, likes, etc. We are impressed by the millions of followers and likes that some well-known people have. But few people realized how many people that a public post can reach. Hard numbers vary, but it’s estimated that about 3 billion people now use social media. That means that people now, for the first time in history, can and do compare their lives to those in other parts of the world. That comparison puts human rights front and center.
The Application Age
Now we come to generations Y and Z, our children and grandchildren. They hold access to virtually all of the information in the world in the palm of their hand. They are growing up with smartphones, computers and social media. And they are becoming more knowledgeable and more sympathetic to more people’s cultures and living conditions through social media.
Unlike previous generations, they have less fear of losing everything through depressions and wars because most have not directly experienced them yet (although tragically too many have), and some have a safety net called “parents”. Thus, they are more willing to take risks, even those with few resources and no safety net. Just look at what young folks are doing globally.
They can see the beginnings of having more leverage in business and the larger society. One of the popular “new” mainstream careers is to start your own business and go it alone. For example, thousands of people worldwide are making millions of dollars through ad revenue by putting their homemade video on YouTube. One man in Sweden started a company Spotify by inventing a music streaming service, never before possible without computer technology and the Internet, that now generates $2 Billion in revenue per month.
In other words, generations Y and Z find success by applying the information developed by their parents and their Gen X siblings.
Self-Worth of The Individual is Key to Organizational Success
We live at the beginning of a new age, where generations Y and Z want to have a greater say in their lives, In short, generations Y and Z have more self-worth.
Today’s management doesn’t fully understand why people won’t work, even when they have joined organizations to work. Yes, like in every generation, there are people who won’t work, but I wonder if not working is also a symptom of today’s management not fully valuing their employee’s worth to the company.
Maybe it’s because management styles haven’t changed that much over the decades, and today’s younger workers don’t appreciate being considered a commodity, despite receiving a good wage and having good working conditions.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is, in most cases for competitive reasons, driving organizations to succeed with fewer and fewer employees.
Competition for relatively fewer smarter, better educated employees is growing. Therefore, organizations must, sooner or later, begin to recognize and to deal with generation Y and Z employee’s self-worth to be successful.
How do they do that?
Action Plan
- Initiate Defensive Strategic Planning
- Most organizations do strategic planning in one form or the other. Their assumptions include
- The organization will be successful at some level. This is not a going out of business exercise.
- Technology can be incorporated to help the company succeed.
- The real planning horizon depends on how long the boss will have his or her job
- The assumptions for defensive strategic planning are
- This is done by senior management away from managing the existing business until changes, if any, have to be made.
- How is new technology affecting our industry and when?
- How will technology changes affect our business and when?
- Are the technology changes in our industry so extreme that we have to change our assets, do something different with our fixed assets or sell the company? When?
- How do we deal with new technologies to take the company forward?
- Most organizations do strategic planning in one form or the other. Their assumptions include
- Review and update management and human resource policies and procedures.
- Develop/adopt ways of identifying current and prospective employees who really don’t want to work. Don’t hire them in the first place.
- Dealing with a person’s self-worth is unchartered territory for both management and most older HR people.
- Currently, management identifies and quantifies the organization’s needs for certain skills and professions.
- HR fills those needs by evaluating a person’s training, previous work experience, and fit with the company culture.
- Adding a person’s self-worth to this evaluation and selection process requires revamping current management culture and HR policies and procedures.
- This should include, at some point, sitting down with the person and coming to a mutually acceptable employment plan.
This process is not voluntary. Technology has already eliminated many long-standing traditional industries and companies, with many more experiencing a slow but certain death. Technology is also changing many organizations and, as I have described, their employee’s expectations for themselves.
So, I believe that organizations will be forced to deal with human rights to survive and prosper.
This is just one man’s vision and opinion. I’m curious if there are others who think this way and can offer alternative solutions. Please share your thoughts in the comments section.
