Developing Gen-Y, A New Hope
Over the last year, our organization has spent a considerable time training groups of Generation-Y employees for Asia-based businesses.
I know from my previous HR days that Gen-Y is a major concern for many organizations; from a hiring point of view as well as with engagement and turnover issues.
Over recent years I have hired hundreds of Gen-Y people and have seen firsthand how many leave many the organization between the 12 and 18 month stage. The figures are quite shocking. Interestingly, I also got to hear their perspective of why they were leaving and many times the reasons were all quite similar.
We all have different filters in the way that we see the world and people around us. As I live in Asia, I constantly see young people going about their lives with their faces glued to their ‘smart’phone. Mostly playing candy crush or on whatsapp (sms is dead). Visit many restaurants and you will see groups of people sitting and dining, and all talking to somone who isn’t physically there. I see children crossing the street playing games on their phones whilst their domestic-helper guides them through the traffic and I see adult couples on dates constantly messaging friends between breaks from taking pictures of their food.
Over the years my filter has been of decreased ability for personal communication and engagement. Over the last year, I’m happy to note, much of this filter has been lifted.
We have recently been training the ‘bright young stars’ of organizations – Management Trainees, Graduate teams etc. in business finesse, organizational navigation & engagement and developing positive workplace relationships.
What I have observed has warmed me immensely. Gen-Y has an amazing appetite for engagement if you train them in the right manner and our training style demonstrably fits. Gen-Y love learning in bite-size chunks (instant life-hacks). They grew up with Google search, are used to instant gratification and demand this in their training. We have found the way to balance this with deeper long-term learning.
The young people we have trained have astounded us with their levels of engagement, their thirst for knowledge & skills and their ability to work together for a purpose that they believe in. The ‘life-hacks’ we gave them just became the foundation for deeper learning and development and we have now taken on a few of these remarkable people to mentor.
They loved the training in business finesse, organizational navigation & engagement and developing positive workplace relationships. The reason why is that generally no-one in the organization has the time to take them ‘under their wing’ and teach them the skills that Gen-X take for granted.
In many cases Gen-Y want to be better than Gen-X. But they want it on their own terms. They want better role models and who are we to say that many of our current role models are suited?
Many managers are ‘fire-fighting’ and under tremendous pressure – job security is low, downsizing means increased responsibilities, far more than our forefathers. Gen-X have taken this on with little protest. When I left my Senior Recruitment role at a large investment bank, they split my workload between 5 staff as not 1 single person could handle it. This workload had a noticeable effect on my health at the time.
Gen-Y will not stand for this as much as we did. This is clearly evident in their attrition rate. If they feel they are taken advantage of, they will just quit and move on. They have no fears about finding other jobs. They have little fear of having 3 jobs in 3 years on their CV (which would horrify most Gen-X). They view the grass is greener elsewhere. Although Gen-X will say argue “it’s not”, this doesn’t curb the high Gen-Y attrition rate.
So how do you stop this high Gen-Y staff attrition?
You talk to them, you engage them, you empower them, you provide them support and you give them good role models.
It seems so simple, but it takes time, effort and is costly. However, what price do you put on developing the leaders of tomorrow?
We will continue offering our programs for Gen-Y and will do our utmost to ensure that these remarkable people are ready to become tomorrow’s leaders.