If you are between 14 and 24 years old, you are part of Generation Y, or that is at least what Elizabeth Lions would tell you. A quick search on Wikipedia leads to a long explanation of the controversy surrounding the exact classification of Generation Y. Elizabeth Lions gave a talk at the Oregon Graduate Institute, which was hosted by IEEE on Gen Y & The “Rules” of the Workplace. Elizabeth has her own staffing agency and does career counseling along with recruiting. She has done business with over 4000 companies in the Portland area. I, as well as others in the audience were surprised that there were even 4,000 companies in Portland that would need access to her services. Let me start, as she did, by stating the facts about Gen Y. (Look on page 13 of the Winter 2007 edition of The Avenue if you are an Addison Avenue member to find out some other, at times conflicting, facts about Generation Y)
The stats:
• 20 million people in Generation Y
• 1 in 3 is not Caucasian
• 2 in 4 is from a single parent home
• 4 in 5 have working mothers
The events:
• 9/11
• Crack cocaine, ecstasy, design drugs
• AIDS
• School Shootings
• PC, CD, MP3’s, SUV, and MTV
• IM (Instant Messenger)
• Text Talk (text messaging and e-mails)
The facts surrounding Gen Y would lead one to believe that a 20 something-year-old would be really messed up because of living in single parent homes, and being exposed to hard drugs and MTV. Yet, Gen Y’ers are some of the most educated and ambitious and there are more facts to illustrate this point.
Erudite and Limitless:
• 90% expect to go to college
• 70% expect to become professionals
• 40 % of college freshman expect to get their master’s
In addition to wanting an education, Generation Y also get along with their parents. 61% report that their parents spend enough time with them, and 46% say they have an excellent relationship with their parents. Just the other day, I heard a friend say how her Mom was so happy to see and talk to her Gen Y brother. On the other hand she is from generation X and does not get along with her Mom all that well. It also seems that the trends of Gen Y are promising as teen pregnancy, drug usage, drunk driving, abortion and high school dropout rates are all declining compare to previous generation (Bad baby bombers, bad!).
The guts of the talk came, after all the facts about Gen Y, when we shifted to Elizabeth’s bread and butter: workplace trends and job counseling. Here is the list of workplace issues that Gen Y’s have:
• Co-workers are close minded
• No training, or training for something that does not get used
• Work delegated to me for no reason
• Lack of knowledge compared to older co-workers
• Disrespect from co-workers
• Intimidation from co-workers
• Others overemphasize on outward appearance
• Others are clock watcher, in at 8 am sharp out at 5 pm in the best case scenario
This is where I actually felt the best during the talk because these experiences are not all common to me, but I definitely know of Gen Y’ers who have had these issues inside and outside of HP. To HP’s credit the company does a good job of not creating a clock watcher environment. Also, as Ben Stien alluded to in his August 2005 article EVERYBODY'S BUSINESS; Hey, Guys, Hairy Knees Are for the Beach, Not the Office in the New York Times, HP has a pretty lenient policy on dress code, and outward appearances. These aspects help HP, and as the workforce evolves so will the policies which will hopefully increasing the retention rate of young employees.
The statistics correlate with the grievances found in the workplace. The turnover rate for workers aged 20-24 years is 54%. In this case turnover is defined as being on the job for 12 months or less. This is quite a large number, and I suspect it might have to do with the grievances listed above or the lack of rotation programs which allow for a person that age to find a focus area that she excels in and has fun doing it. Here is the list of things that Gen Y workers need (and may help retain them):
• Challenging work that matters
• Clearly defined assignments
• Flexibility
• Increase in responsibility over time
• On going training and mentors
Finally, I will leave you with the list of positive facts about Gen Y’ers:
• High level of self esteem and confidence
• Education minded
• Adaptable
• Innovative
• Efficient
• Resilient
• Expressive
• Tolerant
• Technology Savvy
• Committed
Overall, I found Elizabeth’s talk interesting and informational. Although I could relate with some of the categorizations she made, at times I felt like she was generalizing a little too broadly. One of her comments was that Gen Y’ers need to be told exactly what to do as opposed to being told to “go figure it out.” I feel like I would rather try to “figure it out”, but also get some help along the way to get some other ideas bouncing around.
A final piece of advice from Elizabeth, “Get a Mentor at work that your trust. Control your perceptions, sometimes you will have to get along with the tribe and join the tribe. Don’t be afraid to ask your manager what the point is and how what you are doing really fits in to the bigger picture!”
Further Reading:
Employing Generation Why – Eric Chester
Getting Them to Give a Damn – Eric Chester
Managing Generation Y – Carolyn A. Martin
Generation Y -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Y
