A friend of mine Tom recently commented on this obvious trend. At age 51, Tom works as an IT consultant (Form 1099) for a medical technology startup. Tom recently shared that he had just returned from a reunion with his high school friends. Many of those Tom mentioned had held leadership positions in large companies and had pursued long and distinguished career paths to achieve their career goals. So Tom saw more than a coincidence that the only people currently employed among his friends were those who were self-employed or owned their own businesses. All the people in Tom’s group who had risen through the ranks of US companies were currently “displaced due to circumstances.” It doesn’t take much look to see how this phenomenon infiltrates the lives of an entire generation.
The contemporary application of the noun “juniorization” refers to the “elephant in the room.” It is the now common practice to “displace” high-level employees who “don’t have as much clue” left. This is the HR discourse for an illegal practice that involves age discrimination through a strategic deployment of streamlined hires, forced retirements, displacements, and layoffs.
The fact that there has not (yet) been a series of lawsuits for age discrimination does not mean that the problem has not reached a state of crisis. It just means that these illegal practices are difficult to prove. Departing employees are extorted with severance packages that have been significantly scrutinized in terms of tax financial savings for the company. Either you sign, agree to keep your mouth shut and accept what they offer you, or you take the boot and face a lengthy and costly litigation process.
Even while reading this article; HR teams are working feverishly to provide proof that they are not employing juniorization practices. They will publish lists of displaced employees that illustrate the age diversity of people who are about to join the ranks of the unemployed. However, there is a strong possibility that the company will switch and rehire younger staff in newly defined positions, or replace displaced senior staff with “more financially favorable” options, including “external form 1099 consultants” and less experienced employees. and cheaper. .
Hiring managers are strongly discouraged from hiring teams of seniors, even when the senior employee candidate has a particularly advantageous track record as a leader or innovator.
There’s no denying that senior employees may not be as technically up-to-date as their young rising star counterparts. But that’s not an acceptable (or legal) reason to graze them. They still have a lot to offer in terms of historical knowledge * and leadership ** (more on that in a minute).
An interesting analogy can be drawn from the definition of juniorization provided on the ‘BrickWiki’ website, which is a wiki intended to cover all aspects of what is known as the LEGO hobby. ‘BrickWiki defines juniorization as:
“A term used by adult LEGO fans[AFOLs]to describe and critique the inclusion of some highly specialized elements in sets instead of already existing elements that could be assembled in the same configuration. A BURP (Big Ugly Rock Piece) could be considered an element juniorizado but it is more common to refer to parts like that is just an element that plays five stacked “.[AFOLs)tobothdescribeandcriticizetheinclusionofafewhighlyspecializedelementsinsetsinsteadofalreadyexistingelementsthatcouldbeassembledintothesameconfigurationABURP(BigUglyRockPiece)mightbeconsideredajuniorizedelementbutitismorecommontorefertopiecessuchaswhichissimplyanelementthatreproducesfiveofstackedtogether”[AFOLs)tobothdescribeandcriticizetheinclusionofafewhighlyspecializedelementsinsetsinsteadofalreadyexistingelementsthatcouldbeassembledintothesameconfigurationABURP(BigUglyRockPiece)mightbeconsideredajuniorizedelementbutitismorecommontorefertopiecessuchaswhichissimplyanelementthatreproducesfiveofstackedtogether”
The ‘BrickWiki continues: “The main complaint is that the use of juniorized parts reduces the possibilities of building alternative models, a cornerstone of AFOL’s activity.”
So, as the Lego analogy portrays it: Companies are laying off senior employees who have finely honored specialized skills and replacing them with cheaper, younger employees who have less evolved but more diverse skills. As an analogy is made in the Lego world, employing the less skilled and less senior employees will eventually result in long-term organizational failures in flexibility and adaptability.
* Historical knowledge is something that those who use juniorization processes do not value. They are willing to lose years of experience for short-term savings.
“We learn from history that we do not learn from history.”
• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.
“Those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it.”
• Edmund Burke
** Leadership is not a talent that can be taught in graduate school. It is a set of acquired skills. And guess what. Not everyone has the propensity for leadership, so it takes years and years to examine good leaders. Therefore, including less experienced employees in the management group to see who goes under is not the best leadership development process. It will result in the loss of valuable talents through exhaustion and frustration.
The term juniorization is not new. In an October 2004 article in the Columbia Journalism Review (“Letter from Johannesburg: The Transformation Problem” by Douglas Foster in Cape Town, South Africa), the term was attributed to the online source: Double-Tongued Dictionary as:
n. The poll spawned a terrible new word: juniorization. Covers a multitude of sins. When more experienced reporters left the profession because they were traumatized when covering the political violence that hit the country in the 1980s, or crime or AIDS in the 1990s; when the government or corporations snatch from talented reporters twice their salaries as spinmeisters; When someone rises beyond their capabilities, and even when a reporter makes a mistake on a story, “juniorization” is the only solution for everyone. label used to embarrass newsroom dwellers without explicitly mentioning that most of the “youth” are black. “
Therefore, the term juniorization has long had a negative connotation. But the contemporary problem at hand threatens an aging population that is already struggling to establish retirement plans without the promise of social security benefits.
A recent blog post on theSkimm defined the term Juniorization like: “The term why your office happy hours get louder. It’s when a company fires older employees to replace them with younger ones. Because 40 is the new 30 is the new 25. Is the new not so legal?”.
In TheSkimm coverage, they referenced a Business Insider article titled Wall Street is caught by something called ‘juniorization’, and it’s scaring some people in which the practice of firing senior traders and salespeople and replacing them with talent was cited. younger. as the main cause for concern. But this trend, which has been recognized in the world of financial services, is not limited to that sector.
None of this is intended to completely blame Human Relations professionals for these juniorization practices. Obviously, these directives come from a higher level. But, the level of complicity that HR people are exercising is staggering. They smile in the faces of the employees and kick their butt as they walk out the door.
The days of working for a corporation throughout your career are at the danger level on the extinction scale. But don’t show me a rat and call it a puppy. You may be “just following orders” (think war crimes trials), but don’t tell us that you are making fair and nondiscriminatory business decisions. Because we are not that stupid.
