The war of words between Gen Y (born between ‘78 - ‘90) and their managers from older generations has been going on in the business news media for months. Yesterday, Harvard Business Online’s Conversation Starter blog posted some soul-searching comments from all generations and noted that, with interns and recent grads installed snuggly at their desks, it’s time to declare a truce, take stock, and learn something from the generation gap.
Still baffled by the Gen Yers on your team? Tammy Erickson’s report on recent research from the Concours Institute, which used focus groups of Gen Y employees, can help you get inside their heads. The highlights:
“They are happy to handle “big” jobs and tackle them with confidence.…They were not the slightest bit deterred by what older workers might perceive as their lack of experience or even limited qualifications for the task at hand. Most Y’s felt sure that they could tap into appropriate sources to learn how to do what needed to be done.”
“They are impatient and want what they’re doing now to be as enjoyable and meaningful as possible.… The least engaged Y’s in our groups were those who felt they had been given ‘prove it’ work — tasks that had to be done to earn the right to move on to something more significant.”
“They are positively amazed by corporations’ obsession with time…. Most of the focus groups concluded that their work environments were pretty inefficient — they and their friends outside the office get “things” done (problems resolved, information shared) much faster and with less effort than they and their work colleagues. And, as habitual “time shifters, they prefer to do the work on their own schedules.”
Hopefully, listening to these voices from all sides of the debate can lead to more productive, less frustrating relationships between newcomers to the workforce and more experienced management.
