Efforts by companies to retain baby boomers are frustrating younger professionals by delaying promotions and infringing on their independence at work. If you're in Generation X or Generation Y, you've got to be creative to attain the position you want.
According to the Society for Human Resource Management, 55 percent of large U.S. companies are encouraging managers to retain boomers with flexible schedules or retention bonuses. Meanwhile, reports Fortune, managers in their 20s, 30s and 40s are working longer hours and tethering themselves to the office through cell phones and e-mail.
"All this might not be so terrible if that big promotion - the one that catapults an up-and-comer out of middle-management hell and into the senior ranks - were around the corner," writes the magazine's Anne Fisher. "But increasingly, younger workers are finding that no matter how many hours they put in or how much their bosses rave about their work, they're just plain stuck."
Fisher calls this "the gray ceiling," and says the situation is "a function of mathematics." Ten years ago, for example, 43 million U.S. workers were between the ages of 40 and 59. Today, 69 million workers are in that age group. Just 40 million were between the ages of 30 to 39. And, according to Korn/Ferry International, 44 percent of senior-level managers plan to work beyond age 64.
To get past the gray ceiling, look for companies that will rotate you through their operations, as an increasing number of Fortune 500 firms are trying to do, Fisher reports. Others are offering generous tuition-reimbursement packages and pushing senior managers to mentor younger colleagues.
Some younger managers are pressing their firms for the chance to move up by starting new business units. Others take what appear to be lateral moves on paper, but in fact offer more responsibility and command of bigger budgets. A good way to find these opportunities is to consider an open-ended assignment overseas. Still others simply opt out of the corporate world and form their own firms.
"Each of these strategies - be it jumping into a different industry or a foreign market or starting a new venture - takes an appetite for risk," observes Fisher. "But here's what many people forget: Staying put in a going-nowhere job may be an even bigger gamble."
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