Managing a group of Gen X employees can like catching butterflies. If they are already heading the direction the organization wants them to go, you can wave a net and catch them. If not, they will simply flutter by, taking their knowledge and skills to greener pastures. So what can a manager do to increase their chances of catching one of these valuable, but hard to pin down, Gen X’ers? And how can they be motivated once you have them?
Who is Gen X?
To understand how to attract and keep Gen X, managers first need to know a little bit about them. In their article "The Next 20 Years, How Customer and Workforce Attitudes Will Evolve," in the July 2007 issue of Harvard Business Review Howe and Strauss define Gen X as those born between 1961 and 1981, who "grew up in the ere of failing schools and marriages, when the collective welfare of children sank to the bottom of the nations priorities."
As latch-key kids who made their own decisions at an early age, this group is fiercely independent and has an inherent distrust of anyone who “tries to tell them what to do,” including those who fill a parental or managerial role in the workplace.
Unlike their Baby Boomer counterparts in the workplace, who are driven by success in the corporate world, Gen X is driven by a concept of self first, family second and works third. For a Gen X'er, this means the career must somehow enhance the life of self and family, rather than the other way around.
What Does Gen X Want From the Employer?
Possibly because of their latch-key upbringing, and distrust of the corporate world, Gen X is more interested in flexibility than stability. In “Overcome a Talent Shortage: Create a Gen-X Friendly Workplace to Retain Key Talent,” in the October 2007 issue of Spa Management, Deanne DeMarco indicates that Gen X’ers are less impressed with titles and positions and instead prefer “an uncensored corporate structure coupled with opportunities to learn new skills.”
Their primary loyalty is to themselves, so organizations who want to keep them will need to provide them with opportunities to achieve personal or individual goals. In addition, Gen X believes family and personal relationships rate extremely high in their personal heiarchy and as a result may limit the amount of time they will work or hours they will travel, according to Tamara Erickson's article "Don't Treat them Like Baby Boomers" in the August 25th, 2008 issue of Business Week.
Education opportunities and learning in general is important to the Gen X’er, perhaps because of the collapse of the school system during their formative years. Easily bored, Gen X learns quickly and has a voracious appetite for knowledge. As a result, savvy managers will provide on-going training, opportunities, outside education, or even tuition reimbursement to attract them.
In addition, companies will need to offer job share opportunitites, part time work, flexible hours and consulting opportunities to allow Gen X to fill the needs of the corporate world while still achieving their need to be free from corporate constraints.
What Does Gen X Offer?
The Gen X worker is entrepreneurial and known for taking risks. This makes for an employee who will make a decision quickly and take chances to find opportunities others may have missed. Individualized and independent, they are capable of thinking outside the box to find new solutions to old problems. Gen X prefers to be assigned a task and provide the opportunity to set their own parameters for how to accomplish it, rather than be given specific steps on how to achieve a goal.
Because of their independent nature, Gen X'ers is capable of working efficiently with a minimum of supervision. While they are capable of working on a team, they prefer environments that provide each team member with a specific section of the project then allows them to collaborate to create a final result.
Gen X came of age in a world that embraced diversity, the beginnings of the global economy and the societal acceptance of those who are different and are "somewhat oblivious to traditional stereotypes, work well in multicultural and multigenerational workplace settings," according to Maggi Payment in "Who Cares About Gen X-ers? (Short answer: We do.), in the Fall 2008 edition of Career Planning and Adult Development Journal.
Overall, Gen X is a valuable addition to any organization, as long as the organization understands that what Gen X wants may be different from what the employee of the past determined as important. And with millions of Baby Boomers getting ready to retire, and only 44 million Gen X’ers to replace them, knowing how to attract this group is vital for any company.
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