Margery Marshall, president of Vandover, is quoted in the Workforce Management magazine article discussing expatriate early return trends and global talent management issues. Read the full article here.

In part three of our series on generations in the workplace, we focus on the alphabet generations - X and Y - and how employers can recruit, retain, and engage the youngest members of their workforce. Related posts: The 21st Century Multigenerational Workforce (part one) and The Multigenerational 21st Century Workplace: Understanding the "Older" Generations (part two).

For most people, commuting means traveling from home to work and back home every day. For a growing number of workers, the commute no longer happens daily, but rather every few weeks or perhaps even months. These are the people in commuter marriages – meaning one spouse works in a different location than the other spouse/family lives. In relocation, one spouse may move to the new location to start work while the family stays behind to finish the school year or sell the house. For some families, the commuter marriage period is a defined period and for others, a period of time that seems to have no end. In still other cases, the family may opt to send the majority of their time in different places for the duration of a short- or long-term relocation assignment.

Veterans and Baby Boomers, who sometimes get lumped into one category when people talk about the multigenerational workplace, represent employees who were born before 1964. Although there are quibbles over exact dates, Veterans (or Traditionalists) include workers born by the end of World War II, while Baby Boomers are – you guessed it – the product of the famous postwar baby boom that spurred population growth worldwide.

But although these two groups make up the older end of the current workplace spectrum, this doesn’t mean they are identical. Just as it can be easy to see the differences between these two generations and the two younger generations in today’s workplace, at one time during the 1960s and 1970s, these two groups were the younger generations themselves – and they have their differences, too.

The American workplace at the end of the twenty-first century's first decade is brimming with a diverse group of workers. In particular, American employees are diverse partially because they represent a total of four generations between them. If you think about it for a moment, that's pretty amazing in and of itself, to have such a wide span of experience represented in the workplace.

At the midpoint of the twentieth century, most women’s careers revolved around raising their children and caring for their homes. While that’s still an option for many women, things have changed a bit in the last few decades: today, at least 63% of American women work in paid employment outside the home, and 54% of women hold full-time jobs.

Not too long ago, flexible work arrangements seemed to be the purview of moms juggling family and work needs, or reentering the workplace after time spent raising children. Part-time options, job sharing, telecommuting – these have long been some of the most popular flexible work arrangements for employees.

The ubiquitous Cleaver family (of Leave it to Beaver fame) is becoming more and more of a minority in 21st-century America. And move over, Donna Reed: the American family is changing faster than ever. Americans now embrace a wider variety of family arrangements than ever before. Heterosexual marriage is no longer the only acceptable lifestyle choice, although the 2000 Census revealed that nearly 52% of Americans still pursue this option. Your own company likely reflects the changing face of the American family.

Previously, we discussed employee retention as a topic very much on employers’ minds these days. The War for Talent, though, also involves employee recruitment: in addition to formulating effective talent retention strategies, you first need to be able to attract the employees that you’ll want to retain for the long-term.

We all know the cost of absenteeism, but what about presenteeism—when employees are there, but not really there. Think about all the things that might distract you during the workday. Little Johnny’s behavior in school and whether changing schools might help. The spotty Internet service you want to call and complain about. The appointment you need to make with a new doctor.