Coming Up in the August 2010 Issue . . .

FEATURES:
   • Meat/Seafood/Poultry
   • Ber & Wine

    • MarketCast
    • Guest Columns
    • EXPRESS LANE ADS

 And as always, our regional and comprehensive coverage of
the grocery industry!

AD SALES CLOSE DATE:
June 30, 2010

Coming Up in the September 2010 Issue . . .

FEATURES:
   • Brokers
   • Organics, Healty & Wellness

    • MarketCast
    • Guest Columns
    • EXPRESS LANE ADS

 And as always, our regional and comprehensive coverage of
the grocery industry!

AD SALES CLOSE DATE:
July 28, 2010  

Coming Up in the October 2010 Issue . . .

 FEATURES:
   • C-Stores
   • Produce Extra

    • MarketCast
    • Guest Columns
    • EXPRESS LANE ADS

 And as always, our regional and comprehensive coverage of
the grocery industry!

AD SALES CLOSE DATE:
August 25, 2010

Michael Sansolo ROFDA Presentation EXTRA for the July WEST 2010 edition!

 
ROFDA Spring Conference 2010

The Time Is Right to
Reach the Next Generation

“This generation is unbelievably important to us. We need these folks. But we don’t have them,” retail food industry consultant Michael Sansolo told ROFDA attendees during his talk on “Surviving the Demographic Tidal Wave.”

He was referring to the Millennial generation, or Gen Y, whom food wholesalers and retailers need to hire now and in the future. They were born roughly between 1980 and 2000, and they are about 82 million in number, he said. They are a larger generation than the baby boomers, which had 77 million people, and more than double the size of the generation they are succeeding, the Gen Xers, born 1965 to roughly 1980, who are only about 40 million strong.

Today’s young people have been let down by people who used to be heroes in earlier generations. Athletes, politicians, religious leaders, parents, teachers—kids have seen them all in the headlines for bad behavior.

“These folks that we are going to be hiring in, we have to think about them in terms of how to inspire them, who they look up to, and right off the bat, we just crossed off all the usual places for heroes,” Sansolo said.

Who do they look up to?

“Young people look up to Simon Cowell. Why do they like Simon Cowell? If you think about it, it’s very simple. Is he the nicest man on the block? He’s the mean judge (on “American Idol”). If you want nice, you want Paula Abdul, wherever she is these days. Simon tells the truth. And not only does he tell the truth, here’s the part where he goes off the charts—he consistently tells the truth. He talks the same way to every contestant. To kids, that’s the kind of feedback that matters. They are not stupid, these young people. Inconsistency drives them crazy. Be fair to everyone. If someone is not pulling their weight, it irritates them when the boss doesn’t say, ‘You’re not pulling your weight. Step it up or else.’”

Conversely, they also carry with them what some in the older generations might see as an entitlement mentality, but Sansolo says it’s a result of the “realities of the world they grew up in.” Their “helicopter” parents hovered nearby to make sure no difficulties befell them, which hasn’t prepared them to deny themselves many things.

While baby boomers believe in paying dues—i.e., working long hours, odd hours, doing whatever the boss says no matter how outrageous—Millennials believe in asking for a weekend off if they need it, for example.

“If we keep these old rules and keep applying them to these new people, we are going to chase them away again and again and again, Sansolo said. “They’re all going to quit unless you also go in and talk with your managers. We have to change our mindset and become the managers that these people are looking for us to be. We want to recruit them and we want to keep them. And we can do that.”

Gen Y/Millennial workers want to work somewhere where they can make a contribution from day one, he said, because contributing to a company’s success and personal fulfillment are driving factors for these workers, even more so than pay scale, in some cases.

They are racially more diverse than older generations as well, and they want to see that there are opportunities in a company for people who maybe don’t fit the mold of the white male baby boomer.

“I got to do a panel discussion last year at Portland State University … and of the four students on the panel, three were Hispanic and one was African-American. The young woman, the African-American, looked out at the crowd and said, ‘Tell me why I want to work for you, because there are none of you who look like me.’

“You sit there and say, ‘wow, that’s an attitude of entitlement,’ but think about what if you were the first person to look really different in your company—would you feel confident?”

Companies also have to come into the digital age to attract them, he said, noting that, “They are the most technologically savvy group than we have ever had work for us.

“They will talk about you on Twitter and Facebook—‘I work for a cool company, they do training, they listen to us, they give us good evaluations. This is not just an empty job, this is a career.’ This moment is never going to come again. We’ve got to seize this moment,” he said.

He suggested the ROFDA members go out to local universities and high schools to “recruit your socks off” for the next six months and bring in a whole new workforce.

“We have something happening right now that will go away. We have an ample workforce at the moment. We have people who are looking for jobs, who are looking to be engaged, who are looking for careers, who are open to listening to us, who three years ago would have told us to take a hike. Three years from now, we may be in the same position. This is the moment to grab; you can’t let this pass."