Last night, I attended the LIVE Conference 2010 Awards Gala, and the keynote speaker was Henryk Krajewski from Right Management, a talent management company. He spoke at length about the problems that we are currently encountering in the working world, and the problems we will be facing in the not-so-distant future.

It’s a bit difficult for me to remember every single point he made, but here are the key points I remember:

• Our population is growing older, without the same number of young people to replace the aging work force.
• The way we share information has changed, your brand is now much harder to control.
• Gen Y has different priorities and decision making processes compared to their older counterparts.
• Output per hour has been exploding during the recession, which means workers are becoming more and more burnt out.

And he posed the question at the end: Are these problems real? Are companies doing enough to combat these problems?

So here’s the deal: workers are being worked to the bone in order to increase output per hour and save on costs, our population is quickly aging and we can’t find enough people to fill their shoes, and us younger people entering the work force have very different priorities. Expanding on the last point, Gen Y was specifically pointed out as wanting a better work life balance and having their choice of where to work and how to work. You might say, we feel entitled to get more than you think we should.

Here’s where I defend us.

Yes, we have plenty of choices in where we work, what we do for work, and how we do our work. Personally, I need to be challenged with interesting problems with the freedom to create interesting solutions, I don’t want to spend half my life on public transit, and I like to play sports and do social activities. If I am a part of your organization and you give me a problem, I will give you the very best work I can give, but all of the hours clocked might not come during the hours of 9 to 5, because I work at a different pace than you might expect.

Now here’s where we differ: many companies really only care about the bottom line. You want a massive amount of output with a minimal investment, because that gives you the greatest ROI. I feel that many companies take this approach when it comes to hiring, simply because it works. However, now that Gen Y-ers have different priorities from our predecessors, this approach is failing to attract the right talent to the workplace.

So what do I think? Investments have to be made by corporations to create a workplace environment that makes us want to come in and work our butts off for you. Let us work flexible hours and participate in our extracurricular activities. Give us interesting and challenging problems to solve.

Do that, and we’ll move mountains for you.