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Many companies striving to be good corporate citizens today face an internal tug of war between giving attention to community initiatives that address social problems and the growing demand to make environmental issues paramount.
2010 Conference: Generation Y – Who are they, where did they come from and why should you care?
By Tim Wilson, Editor & Writer, Boston College Center
On the final day of the 2010 conference attendees were offered advice on the workplace of the future and its relevance for corporate citizenship by an envoy for the young terrors of Generation Y who have already begun invading corporate America.
Nadira Hira wrote Fortune’s widely discussed 2007 cover story on Gen Yers and their impact on corporate America. She also writes a blog for Gen Yers on Fortune.com called “The Gig”. Along with her age, these credentials make her a perfect interpreter for this generation of Americans born between 1977 and the mid-’90s.
Hira addressed the unasked questions on the minds of every baby boomer and members of Generation X in the audience: Who are these strange creatures? How do you deal with them? And, how can they possibly become an asset to an organization?
In her conversations about Generation Y, Hira said, she consistently hears that “twenty-somethings are always annoying, they’re always entitled, they always think they know everything and they’re certain they are going to change the office, the workplace and the world.”
But she pointed out that this generation is different than the many before them that corporate America feared was ushering in the beginning of the end. Among the key differences that Hira said make this a critical issue is sheer demographics. American baby boomers born between 1946 and 1964 number 78.5 million. Generation Xers born between 1964 and 1977 number 48 millions. Enter the Generation Y horde numbering 80 million.
“You are outnumbered,” explained Hira. “You need us. There is no way to get around it.” With 64 million boomers in retirement by the end of this year, she pointed out, there are not enough Generation Xers to fill the succession gap. “That’s why you’ve got to deal with us.’’
In order to deal with Gen Yers, Hira said, you must understand what she describes as the three formative factors that make them who and what they are.
Parents – Over indulgent, over involved parents created kids with over the top, off the chart expectations, she said. “The reality is this is as much about our parents as it is about us,” said Hira, who described boomers as the original self-absorbed generation. “We learned this behavior from you.”
Boomers were not the center of their parents’ world, Hira said, so when they became parents they went the other way and overcompensated. The affluence of the time allowed it and with both parents working when they wanted to be there with their kids, guilt exacerbated it. The result is a skewed sense of adulthood and a stretched out adolescence. “If 40 is the new 50, and 40 the new 30, then naturally 25 is the new 15,” said Hira. This means Generation Y is getting married and having kids later, she observed, meaning the usual responsibilities that might keep young employees committed to a job or company don’t exist and they are more willing to see what’s out there.
Technology and media – While in the past it may have been difficult to generalize about a generation, Hira said, there is a “uniformity of perspective” to Generation Y brought on by technology. It allows attitudes to permeate all 80 million Gen Yers in days.
It’s also responsible for Generation Y thinking differently about work. While boomers connect work with showing up in a physical space for a fixed time, for Gen Yers work can happen at 3 in the morning with a laptop while watching TV, Hira said. They are goal and task oriented, not tied to schedule or place.
But Hira concedes technology has a big downside for Generation Y. “We have no social skills whatsoever,” she confessed, noting that instant messaging, emails and now texting have replaced communicating in person. “In some ways,” she said, “technology has put us so far ahead that we are actually behind when it comes to just being human beings.”
The world Yers grew up in – Hira believes this is the factor that has had the most impact because it has made this generation “so used to instability and so incredibly distrustful.” Pointing to the 9/11 attacks, Katrina and Columbine as just some of the reasons, Hira said Generation Y learned that danger is immediate and completely unpredictable. They’ve seen parents and friends get laid off and trust put in organizations and institutions that simply did not earn it or deserve it. Unlike their parents, Gen Yers don’t plan to wait until 65 to live their best life only to find the future they invested for is gone. “They’ve learned it isn’t worthwhile to wait,” Hira said, and are striving to have that best life now.
“What does that give you?” Hira asked. “On the one hand, it gives you a really annoying person” who is loud, entitled and shows up for work in jeans with tattoos and piercings. “On the other hand,” she continued, “You’re getting somebody who is really competitive. Someone who is really worldly, somebody who is driven, somebody who is goal oriented, somebody who cares about values, and somebody who was brought up in a way that they really can be loyal.”
The trick, Hira advised, is to mitigate their challenges and “channel those wonderful effects you get into somebody who can be incredibly effective for your organization.”
Hira offered three key strategies for engaging Generation Y employees in a way that brings out the best in them, their colleagues and the company.
Mission or vision – “This is a generation that wants to be proud of whatever we can commit to,” said Hira, noting that Generation Yers want to share values with an organization that they can be proud of. She stressed that this is not about having a mission statement. “What this generation is looking for is not jargon and it’s not that encapsulating sentence necessarily, it’s really what makes you special.”
Not surprisingly, authenticity is a key to the mission or vision that Gen Yers are looking for in a company. While in the past marketing didn’t need to meet reality, today’s job candidates can easily go to Google to find out if a company is being honest. Hira said Gen Yers will respond better to a company that honestly talks about where it stands and where it aspires to be and how it wants their help to get there.
Opportunity – “This is a generation that if we have invested in your mission wants to contribute to it,” explained Hira. She said Gen Yers are looking to hear about career planning at a company up front. Not in terms of guarantees but rather as a conversation that talks about the experiences necessary to advance instead of laying out a long list of requirements. “No one wants to stay in the same job for 30 years and companies don’t want that either,” said Hira. Gen Yers need to know what experiences will get them to the next level because they have “learned not to put our heads down and hope for the best because the best is not going to come that way.”
Community – “This generation craves community,” said Hira. She remarked that technology can help getting back to an older sense of community that involved relationships “but it can’t replicate substantive bonds. A company can offer this.” This makes volunteering a big part of Generation Y along with a need for mentoring relationships that provide feedback – feedback that is regular and not just about telling somebody when something is wrong. This need for feedback also relates to another trait developed in them by parents who replaced reprimands and correction with negotiation and explanation.
“We need you to explain things,” said Hira. “This is not just Generation Y, as in the letter, it’s generation W-H-Y. We need to know why, why, why all the time.” But in addition to satisfying curiosity, she noted, all these questions serve an organization by making it analyze its processes.
So is all this insight into Generation Y just about continuing to indulge and deal with the latest group of whipper-snappers to overrun the office? No, Hira explained. It’s about taking this information to figure out “how do we get everyone else on board so they can be productive together.”
To make it work, she said, first the generations must be integrated in a way that recognizes their unique place in this workplace dynamic. Boomers need to recognize that the “monster” terrorizing them is just like the monster they raised that is out terrorizing somebody else. “Most indignant boomer bosses are often indulgent boomer parents,” observed Hira. The Generation Xers feel threatened by Gen Yers at the office like the older siblings who return home to find out that the rules they lived under have disappeared for their little brothers or sisters. At the same time, they don’t see their boomer boss ever leaving and fear what’s going to become of them and their careers. Managers, Hira said, must acknowledge the generational squeeze being felt by Gen Xers.
Next companies need to take advantage of the perspective Gen Yers bring to the job and use it to bring the generations together in their work, Hira said. Older workers are assets, she remarked, and Gen Yers know it. “This generation responds to expertise.”
Finally, to make it all work, there needs to be at least one senior leader to champion the efforts to tap into Generation Y for the good of the organization. “Get them engaged in the act of talking with these young people, engaging these young people,” urged Hira.
Hira concluded that engaging Generation Y in the workplace successfully goes to the heart of corporate citizenship. “To succeed with any of your employees, but particularly with Gen Y, is all about being a good company,” said Hira. “That’s what we’re all trying to do every single day.
“And nothing we’ve talked about isn’t authentic or is bad. All of these things can be easily accomplished simply by asking yourself at every single point, ‘Are we being a good company? Are we doing the right thing?”
May 2nd, 2010 at 7:28 PM
[...] factors that future bosses need to understand to work effectively with Gen Y, as described in the conference blog: Parents – Over indulgent, over involved parents created kids with over the top, off the chart [...]