This has been a recurring theme this week – engaging prospective employees in the ways they want to be engaged. With the biggest mass retirement in history just a few short years away, it’s incredibly important for companies to get on the bandwagon.

First, it was Shel and Neville at FIR, reviewing some news items that talked about the “attitude” of the new generation, and how they’ll work really hard for you, but on their terms, and that social networking strategies inside the enterprise are likely to be a key part of engaging them.

Over to the Social Media Collective, and Jevon MacDonald’s gob-smacked reaction to this incredibly out-of-touch article about social media on CIO Insights:

Wow, how to you ignore the fact that several generations are now growing up on these platforms? They are literally addicted to being connected in a way that even I still have to get used to.

Then, this morning I had the pleasure of being interviewed for the IA Podcast by Jeff Parks, in advance of the CapCHI workshop, which I’m speaking at in April. Our conversation wandered over to… the largest mass retirement in history, and how do companies both engage their new workforce and attempt to retain some of the knowledge leaving the organization? (I suggested wikis and an end to “hard retirement” – letting experienced workers share their knowledge and experience through social media technologies and platforms while wearing their pajamas at home).

And finally? Today’s news that Deloitte [full disclosure: I have done a lot of work for Deloitte.ca] had launched:

the first corporate blog to explore the issues and personal experiences women and men face in pursuit of career advancement and work/life balance… the blog provides a forum for candid discussions that aim to help professionals enhance their careers and find ways to make flexibility and choice a staple of the workplace.

(And, in my experience, if ever there was a place where employees needed help achieving a work-life balance, it’s Deloitte).

Another interesting note: the blog was internal for 18 months (though selected stories from those archives are now available to the public) and they have a wonderfully clear set of guidelines for commenters, something I’d actually like a few of my clients to read if they happen by:

We invite you to submit comments to any of the posts you find on this blog—current or archive—by using the form below. Along with our Blog Etiquette, here’s some important information you should know:

Submissions will be read within a day or so by the blog moderators. Comments in line with the etiquette will be posted with first names and locations as identifiers. (Sorry but that’s the way it’s gotta be done in corporate America.)

Your contact information will be protected as outlined in our Privacy Policy. If you do not wish to be identified, you are invited to put “anonymous” in the name category.

If you happen to include an individual’s name or the name of a company in your comments, it may be replaced with a generic descriptor (“large financial services firm,” for example).

My only initial complaints are that their software requires that you remember the name of the post that you’re commenting on (why is that??) which, of course, no one ever will without having to click back and forth a bunch of times, and once your comment is submitted, there’s no clear link back to the blog post you were reading.

Anyway, overall, well done – it looks like Deloitte is a company that really “gets” social media – and they’re also “getting” the fact that recruitment and retention are soon going to be “business as unusual”*

*A tagline I pitched for some promotional material in support of a business award program Deloitte had in Canada. They didn’t go for it, but I thought it was terribly clever.