Roger Herman

“An unprecedented turnover in the labor market is coming,” futurist and author Roger Herman told the stunned group of operations professionals during his keynote presentation “The 21st Century Workforce: Trends and Truths” at last month’s National Conference on Operations and Fulfillment (NCOF). Here’s a much abbreviated version of Herman’s argument: Gen Xers, those born between 1965 and 1985, are the first generation of latchkey kids. As such, they learned from an early age to be independent. And sure enough, they tend — as a group — to jump jobs more readily than their baby boomer predecessors. Couple that culture with studies recently