There is a lot of buzz among career and human resources professionals about Gen Y (people born between the early 1980s and early 1990s). Companies are very interested in learning more about what it takes to recruit and retain the Gen Y’s and it will become increasingly important for them to know how to communicate with young job seekers.
There are several career bloggers and authors that help companies better understand and embrace the Gen Y culture. And while I admire the insights of many of the people in this space including Penelope Trunk, Dan Schawbel, and Alexandra Levit and I think there is a need for companies to understand what makes Gen Y’s tick, I’m just not convinced that people from different generations are all that different. Instead, I believe that people want different things at different stages of their life.
I recently attended a presentation about generations in the workplace where a Gen Y employee from a leading management consulting firm spoke about what Gen Y’s want. And as a member of an older generation, the boomers, I kept saying to myself “That sounds like me when I was your age.” For example:
- Gen Y’s want to do meaningful work and they don’t want to wait long before making a contribution. When I was in my twenties, nothing could happen fast enough for me. The time in between promotions seemed endless. I resented some of the mundane, mind-numbing work I was asked to do early in my career. I remember looking at my then 40-year old boss and thinking “Am I going to have to wait until I am THAT old before I get to where she is?” And despite the fact that I was one of the youngest managers in my division in one of America’s biggest and best known companies, it still wasn’t fast enough for me.
- Gen Y’s want their management to communicate and tell them what is going on, even if it is not good news. If the communication is not open, they will go to other resources, mainly social media, to find information. I felt the same way. And while I didn’t have Facebook and Twitter to give me the scoop, I had a phone and a lunch hour to gossip about what was going on and both methods seemed to work pretty well.
- Gen Y’s want feedback on their performance. I wanted that too. Everyone wants to know that their work is appreciated, that they are on the right track, and that their efforts will pay off in the end. And when you are still new in your career, you want it even more because you are used to getting continuous feedback from your parents and your teachers in school.
- Gen Y’s want flexibility. As a newly minted employee, I wanted to do a good job, but I also wanted a life. I had no problem staying late if I was cut some slack in the morning and I would work on a weekend if there was a benefit to me. While we didn’t have as many tools then to create a flexible work environment, we certainly tried our best to create one anyway.
So maybe we don’t need to figure out what is so different about this generation. Maybe, instead, we just need to remember what it was like to be young. And maybe we also need to realize that what we wanted when we were young isn’t always that different from what we want now but maybe we have settled. What did you want early on in your career and how has that shaped what you have now?