onths ago, LEADER Magazine's Industry Tracker underscored the profoundly changing nature of business and work by detailing how "Workplace Flows to the Mainstream."

We said the workplace is an estuary, where many disciplines mix like a rising tide. It's a corporate confluence of constantly-changing fresh and salt water in the form of flexibility, mobility, collaboration and, of course, productivity.

It's high tide now.

Today, four generations in the corporate workplace are also influencing the flow, and, like so many other things, demographics are redefining the nature of work.

Young people have increasing influence over workplace practices, an Industry Tracker white paper released at last October's CoreNet Global Summit in Atlanta reported. The focal point is the so-called Millennial generation, workers born after the 1970's.

Are younger workers really the leading influence, or are they the tail wagging the corporate dog, so to speak? Employers who don't deliver cool workplaces, mobile technology and flexible working terms - along with a social conscience - will lose them to other companies.

60 Minutes looked at the question in its May 25 program, with Morley Safer of CBS News coming down squarely on the side of the Millennials holding sway. It's a "coddled" generation that thinks "business as usual is for the birds," Safer reported. "They have the upper hand" in the so-called "War for Talent."

But corporate real estate and workplace executives don't necessarily agree . . . cost and energy savings, productivity, flexibility, innovation, customer satisfaction, profit, and - ulimately - the optimization of the CRE portfolio are trumping the kids even in the face of a much-bandied shortfall in the supply of younger talent needed to replace the far more populous generation of Baby Boomers now exiting the workplace.

So is the current economic slow-down that's created a lot less demand for new hires, at least for now.

Richard Kadzis is senior contributing editor for The LEADER magazine, CoreNet Global's official publication. Reach him at industrytracker@corenetglobal.org

Companies build flexibility into their operations, in part, today as a hedge against changing business conditions. Workplace is one way, for sure. Sale-leasebacks and other flexible leasing practices represent another way. Attracting talent and reducing the carbon footprint are also examples. Taken together, they define portfolio optimization, but no part is greater than sum: the management of assets and creation of value.