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Dealing with 'free agents'
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October 31, 2000: 12:57 p.m. ET
Managers need new team-building tactics to succeed in today's workplace
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - While employers moan about the lack of loyalty among today's workers, they shouldn't be surprised, says a Generation X researcher. After all, they started it.
"It was their idea -- downsizing, restructuring, re-engineering. It's what companies needed to do to get fluid and flexible," said Bruce Tulgan, founder of RainmakerThinking Inc., a GenX consultancy in New Haven, Conn.
Today, however, with a staffing crisis one of the dominant features of the business environment, the tables have turned on managers who now complain about fickle employees.
 But the concept of "free agency" among workers is becoming a broad trend. "That mindset is sweeping through the work force among people of all ages," Tulgan told host Rhonda Schaffler Tuesday on CNNfn's "Market Call." "It's not just Generation X."
That means employees are unlikely today to put up with undesirable working conditions or schedules, for a chance of something more appealing in the future. Instead, he said, they are likely to quit.
Companies tried to hire loyalty with gambits such as stock options, but that approach had a couple of key drawbacks. First, the reward (a higher stock price) was not tied directly to performance on the job. Then, when a market downturn left those options underwater and valueless, they lost any value they may have had in promoting employee retention.
What can an employer do then? Tulgan, author of the forthcoming book "Winning the Talent Wars," (W.W. Norton, January 2001) suggests there is no single answer.
"This one wants more money. That one wants a different schedule. Another person wants to trade in her responsibilities for a whole new set. This one wants to be included in high-level meetings. That one wants to attend a particular training program. Still another wants to start telecommuting ... from a thousand miles away," Tulgan says in a book excerpt posted on the firm's Web site.
He urged managers to embrace free agency, not only for their own careers but for the benefit of their organizations: "Become the leader who can always mobilize the best team for any project anywhere, anytime. If you can become that leader, you will be so valuable on the open market that you'll have absolutely nothing to fear."
Indeed, such a task orientation, with its free-flowing approach to teamwork, may be the only solution in a business world where employee loyalty is only a memory. (570K WAV or AIFF)
"The answer may be, don't try to get them to stay with you," he told Schaffler. "Leaders should focus on getting the work done day to day." 
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RainmakerThinking Inc.
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