Gen Y- Changing the World One Team at a Time
Team-Oriented Gen Y May Change How Business is Done
Oct 30, 2009
More than just youngsters who will grow up and straighten up, Gen Y is growing up in a world much different than that of the Baby Boomers and Gen X. As a result, this group has culture and thought process than is quite different from those who came before.
With 65 million baby boomers expected to retire by 2020, and only 44 million Gen X’ers available to replace them, Gen Y will become the sought after worker of the future. Team-oriented, techno savvy and better educated than any group previously entering the workforce they are a great fit for the workplace of tomorrow. However, their expectations can be significantly different from what the Baby Boomer or Gen X employer expects.
While the Baby Boomer was willing to do whatever was necessary to get the job done, and the Gen X’er saw work as a necessary evil, Gen Y sees having a job as simply a means to an end. This group looks at what qualifies as a “career” differently than those who have come before.
For Gen Y, born between 1980 and 2000, a career is what they do to make the money needed to fulfill life goals. Rather than defining success as working their way to the top of the business, this group defines success as working their way to the top of Everest, feeding starving children in Africa or taking a month-long sabbatical to China to study Mongolian history. The job is simply how they make the money to get there.
Gen Y: Where did They Come From?
The parents of Gen Y concentrated on education and building self esteem and Gen Y’ers were raised with the mantra “you can do anything” ringing in their ears. Raised by Gen X parents who distrusted the employer to do right by them, Gen Y saw their parents work and struggle. Corporate scandal, bankruptcy and poor ethics have been a constant to this group, who are accustomed to businesses putting profit before people.
This has had a profound effect on how Gen Y thinks about business. Sacrifice for success is out. Sacrifice for others is in. Gen Y is by far the most altruistic generation partially because of changes to the educational system. Senior projects and charity work are now a normal part of the high school educational experience and Gen Y expects that to continue at work.
Gen Y on a Team
In addition to being altruistic, Gen Y is team-oriented. Members of Gen Y have been on teams since childhood, so they are used to the idea of brainstorming and sharing resources to solve a problem. Raised in an era where no one kept score at t-ball games, the Gen Y employees are not going to be in competition with each other. Rather, they work together to solve a problem.
This mentality of working together and sharing answers can be problematic for employers who were raised to “do their own work.” In “The Challenge of Selecting Tomorrow’s Police Officers from Generations X and Y” in the 2003 issue of The Journal of American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, Francis McCafferty MD found seven out of 10 Gen Y’s surveyed admitted cheating on a test. This raises the question; do members of Gen Y believe cheating is acceptable, or do they believe teamwork involves sharing answers?
In addition to teamwork in person, this group strives for teamwork electronically. Raised with cell phones, the Internet, and I-pods, Gen Y expects technology to be a part of any workplace to allow them to keep in touch with their “team.” Social networking sites like You Tube© Twitter© and Facebook© are all normal parts of the 24-hour access to every aspect of their lives, and they expect this to translate into their work environment.
This team-oriented vision of what is expected in the workplace may be a huge paradigm shift for employers who expect one or two exceptional employees to rise to the top at the expense of others. Instead, business will need to adapt to a teamwork environment to keep their Gen Y employees engaged and successful.
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