What’s wrong with Gen Y’s work ethic?
A new report says millennials don’t know how to cope with office life, but, asks Tanith Carey, are we really giving them a chance?
Have you ever laughed at your parents for not being able to change their social media settings – and then had to Google how long it takes to boil an egg? Or have you rung your boss on Monday because you felt ill on Sunday and, therefore, felt deserving of another day off – in order to be able to enjoy “a proper weekend”? If so, don’t say another word.
You are already pegged as a “millennial” – born roughly in the decade after 1983 – and a member of the generation branded the most entitled and self-absorbed in human history. Yesterday the CBI, representing the heavyweights of British industry, issued yet another exasperated harrumph on the fecklessness of young people entering the workplace; its latest study of business leaders reporting that a third of companies are dissatisfied with graduates’ attitude to work and their ability to “self-manage”.
Text-speak and Twitter reductionism is also letting our young hopefuls down, a similar number complained, with literacy and numeracy skills so poor among university leavers that they have to be topped up in the workplace.
If there was ever a moment that laid to rest the image of the eager besuited graduate plucked fresh from a university milk round for a job for life, and instead confirmed its replacement with a casually dressed slacker, strolling into work late on his phone, only to complain that there’s no room on the office bean bag, this must surely be it.
Indeed, when Simon Sinek, a British marketing guru, gave his blistering analysis of everything that’s wrong with Generation Y last year it hit such a nerve that it went viral within a day and has now racked up more than a million hits on You Tube.
With devastating clarity, he painted a picture of how a generation given everything for nothing has created a crisis of unmet expectations in the workplace: “They’re thrust into the real world and in an instant they find out that they’re not special, their mums can’t get them a promotion, that you get nothing for coming in last – and, by the way, you can’t just have it because you want it.”
Crescens George, chief operating officer of Be Wiser Insurance group, is one of the business leaders bemoaning the cost of “graduate ego-massaging time”. He recalls one young man whom he recruited a few years ago straight from university onto an accelerated future talent programme on a good wage. Far from being keen to learn the job from the bottom up, George said the young man let it be known that dealing with customers in the call centre was too far beneath him to contemplate. “We were almost on the verge of terminating his employment contract, but he had good analytical skills so we saw the future potential, supported him in learning the basics, and today he is in a relatively successful and relevant role.”
George adds: “You would expect that university education would teach some basic business etiquette, and certainly communication skills. He did not communicate, besides showing a
‘They’re thrust into the real world and find out that they’re not special’
sheer lack of interest in the job. He was not willing to make the sacrifice of learning through the ranks.
“I can only attribute this to the stress of having £50k debt [from university loans] hanging over his head, and of finding out that the real world of work is different to how it’s painted in the lecture rooms. Had we not had to waste around 12-14 months on unnecessary graduate ego-massaging time, I am
sure that this employee would have tasted his success a little sooner, and opened doors to leadership opportunities by now.”
Professor Cary Cooper of the Manchester Business School agrees with the CBI that some young graduates do seem to be lacking in social skills: “They have been raised on Facebook and texting. The way you develop your social skills is by face-to-face interaction, and this generation has had the least of that.”
He maintains, however, that young graduates are every bit as enthusiastic and eager to learn as previous generations. They just have little interest in kowtowing to traditional management structures, and are viewed with suspicion by bosses because they don’t expect to stay at the same company for long.
“The new graduates have seen older employees, who have been at their companies for many years, dismissed and treated like disposable assets. They are trying to protect themselves. So, in other words, that traditional contract of employment has been broken for that generation. They simply don’t have the same company loyalties that were expected in the past.
“Senior managers are hanging on to the old ways and expect these young people to act and behave in the way they did when they were picked up at their university milk rounds in the Eighties. As a result, I don’t think employers know how to use them. But if you push them to the best of their capabilities, they will still come up with the goods.”
Averil Leimon, leadership psychologist with the White Water Group, agrees that millennials “certainly want different things”
– and it could be this that is making us uncomfortable.
“They want a more balanced life. They have often seen one or both of their parents working flat out and not coming home till late, knackered after the commute. They want to find ways to incorporate real relationships, be hands-on in bringing up their kids, keep up external interests and be fit and healthy.
“They were born and grew up with technology so they know how to work remotely and cannot see why sitting in a building is required. They don’t ‘go to work’, they just work. Technology is integral to their lives so they do not split home and work as rigorously as previous generations. They seek close and rewarding relationships at work, not just in their personal lives.”
Indeed, some business leaders are already proclaiming that we need to be more like millennials, instead of trying to make them more like us.
Retail guru Mary Portas now describes herself as a “fiftysomething millennial, or what you might call a slashy”, and sees nothing wrong with Generation Y demanding the work-life balance that their parents never had. “I’m a businesswoman/tv presenter/ author/charity retailer/mother/wife/ Dj/anything that comes along that inspires me,” she recently told The
Daily Telegraph. As a result, she has now reshaped her company in line with that thinking. Her management and board “now have the right to take as much holiday as they like, when they like, set their own hours and take open-ended maternity leave.”
So why are we condemning young people for wanting the balanced lifestyle that we never achieved?
Ms Leimon says: “I was recently working with an investment banker. He told me, ‘Millennials have no values’. I said, ‘Gosh, really? Don’t you mean they have different values?’ He then inveighed about his son who had rejected his father’s absent, workaholic, money-focused way of life for something different and more personally rewarding.
“Indeed, if we were to design a business all over again to suit human nature, allowing people the chance to use their strengths for fair reward and have a satisfying home life, wouldn’t we want this, too?”
‘They simply don’t have the same loyalties that were expected in the past’