Employing Generation Y Part 1

Being born in 1985, I am part of the much criticized Generation Y. As most marketing gurus will point out however, is that culturally, GenY aren’t all that different to previous generations – Boomers and Gen X did just as many crazy things as ‘kids these days’ do now.

I recently attended the Leadership Breakfast at The University of Adelaide that featured a presentation by Philip Morton from Morton Philips (you can listen to the presentation on the uni website), where he touched on the way Gen Y are shaping workplaces and changing the status quo of organisational structure, behaviour and culture. He remarked that while there is a perception that Gen Y is lazy and devoid of true work ethic, it’s not that they want to work less, it’s that they want to work differently.

I couldn’t agree more. Yesterday at the ATEM conference (see my post on the academics of 2020), Mark McCrindle also spoke about how GenY are all about work/life balance. He showed a diagram detailing how GenY want an equal balance between focusing on the Task, their needs as an Individual, and the needs of the Team, all overlapping. McCrindle joked that employers probably see that the Task dominates the other two areas, and a member of the audience (a Boomer I believe) said that it was all about getting GenY to THINK that they are getting the balance they want while having the employer really getting what THEY want.

Honestly, you don’t need to trick us. I don’t want to work less, I want to work differently. I want to complete 10 tasks in 6 hours, leave work, and spend the remaining 2 hours of my ‘work day’ upskilling and learning how to accomplish 15 tasks in those same 6 hours. I want to work early in the morning, and late at night. I want to work from home, in the office, and in a cafe while drinking a latte. I don’t want to work less – I still want to exceed the expectations of my employer and I am still just as committed (if not more) to the organisation – I just want to work differently.

McCrindle showed us a slide containing some of his latest research findings – the top 5 keys to GenY employee attraction/retention:

1. Work/Life Balance (flexibility)
2. Workplace Culture (community)
3. Management Style (accessibility)
4. Job Content (variety)
5. Training (employability)

He noted that the education sector was in an excellent position to provide this kind of working environment, and I have to admit they are already doing a pretty good job of it. What was most interesting was that McCrindle said he asked participants in this research what an employer would have to provide a GenY employee if they couldn’t provide any of those 5 things. Not surprisingly, the top answer was money. Forty percent more in fact. Wrap your head around that – the average Gen Y’er would expect 40% more money than they think they are worth. If that was off my current pay packet, I’d be getting an extra $20,929.20 a year. I guessed in my head $10-15k and I thought that was a bit cheeky, but over 20k?!

I’m going to go away and work out if that might be worth it for my employer or not…

TO BE CONTINUED