I have been working on this post for a few weeks now and have finally decided to wrap it up and publish. Two weeks ago The Economist ran an interesting article about the challenges of managing and integrating my generation into existing corporate cultures.
Many employers are facing these challenges and responding in different ways. My generation’s values are not radically different from previous generations, they simply manifest in different ways. There are five main areas that challenge employees when working with, managing, and integrating members of my generation: Loyalty; Tradition, Openness; Accountability; and Feedback.
After starting on this post, I realized the content was too heavy and long to squeeze into one post. I have am breaking the information down into managable chunks. I hope to have this entire series wrapped up early next week and then follow with suggestions to managers for effectively dealing with the Facebook generation.
Loyalty- When discussing my generation folks love to cite our propensity to “job hop.” On the surface, this appears to be a valid criticism. We do, generally, change jobs and careers more frequently than boomers. A job is a value proposition between the employer and the employee. The model that boomers ‘grew up’ under was pretty simple: You work for me, I pay you well; You work for me for your entire career, I’ll take care of you in retirement. For many boomers, being taken care of normally involved a pension, generally a defined benefit (DB) plan. This promise of a pension encouraged workers to stick with one company for life. Even if the pay wasn’t always great or if the work wasn’t challenging, most employees stuck around because they knew that loyalty would be rewarded upon retirement.
For my generation, this proposition has changed. Most businesses have eliminated DB plans, or at least changed to a defined contribution (DC) plan. Most companies only offer 401(k) plans in place of an actual pension. So, the proposition is now: You work for me and I pay you: You work for me for your entire career, I’ll make contributions to your 401(k). Since a 401(k) can be converted into an IRA if you leave the company, so there is no reason to stay with one company if they don’t meet all your needs.
Employers made the decision to cut costs by phasing out DB plans. Faced with no promise of being taken care of in retirement, my generation was forced to re-jigger their values and expectations. The result is a focus on instant, or more accurately, short-term gratification. To a manager, this appears to be a shift in values. In reality, this is a reaction to financial decisions made in previous years.
Tradition- My generations approach to tradition is a significant departure from the boomer generation. When employees stayed with one company for their entire career there was no challenge to traditions because each company was an island unto itself. Entry level employees did not challenge these traditions because they might offend someone. Besides, what the hell does a new employee know anyway.
Due to my generations penchant for job-hopping many of us have previous work experience, even at the most entry-level positions. We don’t believe that jobs and careers are the same thing and we rarely plan to stay with a company for our entire career. Therefore, we have little reason to accept tradition at face value. The worst thing that can happen, in our minds, is that we offend some upper management, it doesn’t ruin our careers, mainly because we don’t plan to spend our careers in the same place. The upside to questioning tradition is that we may offer a completely different point of view to a problem that is more efficient or straightforward.
