Turn Down that Ipod - Where Did My Walls Go???

As we begin to argue about whether the "worst is over", and whether the "greenshoots are taking hold", one of the greatest impacts of the recent financial meltdown may not be evident for another 3 or 4 years - I'm talking about the delayed retirement of workers 55 and over, and the downstream impact that this will have on the work place.

A number of recent articles have pointed out that retirement is being delayed, primarily because of the "perfect storm" of housing and stock market devastation, which has collectively wiped out a large part of the nation's retirement funds.

This means that the Baby Boomer generation which was getting ready to depart the workplace maybe sticking around for a while. This brings up a lot of "interesting" challenges for those of us planning offices -- specifically the challenge of creating a space that speaks to the Boomers, as well as to Generations X, Y, and (hold your breathe) Generation Z.

Each generation has different expectations on how their work areas should be designed, I found a great article that speaks specifically to this challenge, "Managing Multiple Generations in the Workplace" and I also found some great resources on the Business Week.com site: "Generational Tensions At Work".