What shaped the generations?
Let us take a look at the driving forces, which have shaped the generations and the effects that these have created.
Traditionalists (1925 – 1943)
The traditionalists grew up during the Great Depression and WWII, becoming the compliant assistants to their parents and older siblings who were heading for the battlefields. Growing up in an overprotected environment with lots of rules and having missed the opportunity to prove themselves in the war, they got nicknamed as the “Silent generation”. Their hierarchical and status-dominated upbringing made them very respectful towards authoritarian and fearsome leaders in the workplace. One was not likely to switch employer, since change was counteracting to the structured way of life that everyone was taught to live. Work was seen as necessary, and it was one’s duty to provide for his family. Working hard and sacrificing oneself for the greater good became the traditionalist’s motto.
Baby boomers (1944 – 1961)
Then came along the baby boomers, a generation who entered the world after the end of WWII. Life was still relatively hard, but societies slowly began to prosper. Better education and technological advancements helped to make the boomers a successful generation. If one was strong, one could make it. Having lived through and survived WWII, the boomers’ parents thought that their children should do something of themselves. The boomers were encouraged to challenge themselves, resulting in the “me” becoming the centre of attention.
These factors created a competitive, goal-driven and optimistic generation, later on resulting in the first batches of newly produced business MBAs – as well as the first generation of workaholics. Meaning was found by focusing on achieving and getting ahead to eventually ascend to the meaningful positions if you managed to play you cards right. Laying at your deathbed, the work you had accomplished was the proof of your life success.
Generation X (1962 – 1981)
A global economic recession. The fall of the Berlin Wall. The first personal computers. These factors played an important role in the shaping of Generation X. This generation was the first whose parents were both working, spending more and more time away from home trying to impress their bosses, giving up quality time with their children. Spending on average only 15 minutes a day with adult role models, Gen X became used to being alone. This separateness caused many members of Gen X to turn inwards to themselves, retreating to mantras such as “I have to do it myself”.
The bright opportunities of the previous generation were now gone, making Gen X a group of sceptical and realistic individualists prone to huge risk-taking, unafraid of switching between workplaces. Due to the turbulent times, employers were not to be trusted and work could disappear at any time, better not to emerge the entire “you” into it. These circumstances helped breed Gen X into the most entrepreneurial generation ever, creating breakthrough products that shifted the paradigm from “withholding information is power” to “sharing information is power”.
Having seen with their own eyes their parents working their butts off, they became more aware than previous generations of how they spend their time and energy, thus demanding more work-life balance from employers. Bossiness and stiff corporate cultures had to make room for hanging out with friends and enjoying life outside work. Work was seen as a means to an end, while real meaning was sought beyond. The increased importance of having a good time brought informality and fun to the workplace, which was previously quite uncommon or even frowned upon.
Generation Y (1982 – 2001)
Millennials. The Idiot generation. Echo Boomers. Generation We. The Net generation. The Global generation. The Always On generation. Generation Why. There are many nicknames for this latest generation to enter the workforce.
Gen Y are often described as a self-entitled bunch of unmanageable kids, raised to the skies by their parents, labelled as exaggeratedly ambitious dreamers who want everything to happen now, both greater benefits and more time off work. Some see this generation as lazy, while they pride themselves with having been taught to think creatively, finding new and smarter ways to work more efficiently. Since Gen Y were born during relatively good economic times and followed in the wake after the much smaller Gen X, they have always been in demand and have had plenty of choices. A number of key trends have shaped Gen Y into one of the most promising – and misunderstood – groups of people ever to join the workforce, which poses both a huge opportunity as well as a great challenge for employers. Let us find out which trends have had a significant impact on Gen Y.
The first trend: Parenting. Gen Y’s boomer parents were the first to stop ruling with an iron fist, providing autonomy to their children. Therefore, Gen Y have since early childhood been used to having the possibility to choose from an ever expanding selection of activities to participate in. Gen Y have, in contrast to Gen X, spent several hours a day with adult role models. As opposed to Gen X who generally tend to be individualists distinguished by some degree of trust issues and difficulties to work with seniors, Gen Y are team-oriented and thrive when getting to work closely and collaboratively with seniors, drawing on their extensive bank of experience. Moreover, Gen Y’s boomer parents, who were frustrated with trying to be good at everything, encouraged their children to specialise in areas to truly excel. Alongside the constant juggle of choices, this has made Gen Y eager to try and excel in new areas, meaning that they dismiss the idea of being limited to specialising in one sole, predetermined area of expertise.
The second shaping trend is the evolution of the essence of “meaning”, evolving towards a more targeted purpose-driven life. Previously separated professional and private purposes are merging into an overall life purpose. Growing up seeing their boomer parents performing stressful corporate jobs at the same time as catering intensely for their children have made Gen Y very aware of the effects of too high levels of stress. The importance of energy expenditure and renewal, has laid the foundation for a paradigm shift from work-life balance towards life balance. This can mistakenly be interpreted as laziness, but Gen Y are in fact every bit, if not even more, as engaged in their work as previous generations.
They are not interested in labouring long hours to build a kingdom for a manager, but will work their guts out for a cause and a vision larger than themselves. This misperception has created a wide generation gap between Gen Y and previous generations. Gen Y merely strive to maximise the rewards from a wide range of achievements – before, during and after work – in search of a purpose-driven life, exemplified by the following quote from a next generation employee: “A Gen X colleague of mine kept calling and emailing me on evenings and weekends. I tried to discretely transfer the message that this was unwanted behaviour, only to get the response: “I looked in your calendar, and you did not have anything planned”.
Puzzled by this ignorance, I made a recurring “Private appointment” in my calendar each evening and weekend in order to make it clear and visual that I indeed had other plans – they just did not involve work”. For Gen Y, work is just one aspect of a full life, which has to be both fun and inspiring.
The third important trend is the technological revolution. Gen Y is the first generation to grow up being connected to the entire world 24/7, thus inventing new ways of socialising and working at the same time as developing an increased awareness of the global economy and the situation in emerging countries. This has strengthened the will to contribute to progress both for organisations and for the larger world. Furthermore, technological advancements in industries such as computers, social media and travelling have all contributed to the new way of living life in the fast lane. Speed is more important than ever for this “restless generation” and the on-demand culture is anticipated to seep into the workplace as the share of Gen Y increases, affecting career ways, reward models and time-off policies.
Emerged from the trends already mentioned, customisation has arisen as a spin-off trend. Gen Y have always been able to shape the world around them according to their own preferences in a variety of domains:
- Shaping the immediate environment: Which internet pages to add to your favourites, personalised marketing, custom-made apparel and individually selected iPhone apps.
- Expressing who you are: Gen Y have, since childhood, been allowed to express who they are both during spare time and school hours, being less exposed to authoritarian leadership figures.
- Flexibility: The on-demand culture has brought about the opportunity toconstruct a more flexible existence where change is something natural.
So, always having the possibility to shape one’s life according to stationary and emergent needs, the next generation employees will most likely customise their ways of working as well. The one-size-fits-all model is dead.
Last but not least, it is worth mentioning a few key movements which have arisen from the technological advancements and the new patterns of preferences for how to perform work. These movements are expected to play a significant role in the future of business, and Gen Y will play a key role in transforming them into business value.
Crowdsourcing and social media play huge roles in the lives of Gen Yers; behaviours that are starting to become (or already have become) embedded in our society. Answers and new opportunities are never far away. This openness is anticipated to spread to many parts of how business is done, creating work excitement for Gen Y due to a more collaborative and connected workplace. Gen Y gather information and opinions from a wide range of sources, such as Tripadvisor, in connection with where and how to travel and use their social network on Facebook for all kinds of purposes.
More and more businesses are also starting to adopt this way of gathering insights, e.g. LEGO, who use it for product development, and Coca Cola who run their open-sourced “Shaping a Better Future” challenge, asking entrepreneurs to create ventures for improving education, environment, health and youth employment. A recent study indicates that 68% of Gen Y will not make a significant decision before having run it by their network.
Gamification, which is growing in popularity, is a means of spicing up work tasks through game-like approaches in order to create incitements to improve performance in given areas. By providing a story-based experience rather than a “read the manual” approach, it is utilised for e.g. training, team building and innovation purposes. It provides performance-related metrics in real-time, transparency and is related to predetermined goals. The players can earn rewards, level up and build on chosen areas of expertise. An example is the Khan Academy’s math programme, which is basically a video game, but where the story is built up around solutions to equations. Under time pressure, players (students) solve problems and immediately get to know if they are right or wrong. In order to proceed to the next level, the previous questions have to be answered correctly. Correct answers accumulate points which leads to players achieving important milestones, each a success that can be transparently shared with the player’s Facebook network. Moreover, even the U.S. Army use gamification, not only for training purposes but also to attract new recruits and to promote awareness.For Gen Y, purpose activates participation, collaboration sparks innovation and cultivation triggers devotion.
Big Data is currently bringing about the next era after mass customisation, which was made possible by the digital revolution, called mass personalisation. Utilising the vast masses of data being produced by individuals every day in order to uniquely and continuously modify products and services will provide a competitive advantage for those who manage it well. Gen Y were raised in times when access to information suddenly became available to the masses. They almost expect companies to know what they want, before they even know it themselves.
Such expectations have been successfully leveraged by for instance online retailer Amazon and music streaming provider Spotify, who without meeting their customers face-to-face can personalise the entire consumer experience by putting Big Data to work. Quite unlike previous generations, Gen Y are willing to share more information about themselves in order to make their lives easier and more permissive towards product and service suggestions based on their habits.
Acknowledging the need for change
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the world’s by revenue second-largest professional service network are one of the forerunners in the field of adapting to Gen Y. They realised that in order to continue their success story they had to make some tough changes regarding how they run the business. After undertaking a project to find out what gets Gen Y’s motor running, PwC have changed their HR policies to reward primarily quality over time spent and value the personal preferences of each individual employee.
Previous people strategy, largely resembling people-strategy-as-usual in the professional services industry, meant bigger promotions and bonuses to the ones who sacrificed more of their personal lives. The changes that PwC have made mean that they sometimes have to say no to their clients, but as the U.S. Chairman Bob Moritz puts it: “A greater emphasis on non-traditional career models sometimes gives our clients pause, but we’ve learned the benefits of sticking to our people commitments”.
He continues: “It’s not uncommon for our longer-term partners and staff to believe that working hard is, or should be, a badge of honour […]. Millennials are often stereotyped as self-absorbed, quick to shift their loyalties, lazy, and uncommitted to work. We’ve all heard these unfounded myths, and that’s exactly what they are. At PwC, we’ve used education to address assumptions like these. We’ve helped boomers see that although millennials may be more aware of the ill effects of stress and may value non-work interests and activities more than boomers do, they’re every bit as committed to the success of the firm. They’re simply not prepared to sacrifice their health and well-being for it […]. Over the past decade, turnover has decreased by about three percentage points – whileemployee engagement has increased by three percentage points”.
So, let us take a look at the key results from the PwC project and how the organisation has gone about to implement the changes.
The allure of one day becoming partner is no longer enough
Gen Y is in a constant search of creating impact with a purpose. The need for speed and meaning is greater than far-away monetary rewards, so creating faster career ways, job flexibility and allowing people time to have personal lives are important steps in how to attract and re-attract Gen Y. As Moritz explains it:
“Millennials are less willing than boomers to make their work lives an exclusive priority, even when offered the prospect of substantial future compensation. They want job flexibility in the here and now, along with opportunities for training and mobility and better and more frequent feedback and rewards”.
Be honest and do not mess up
Gen Y are quick to react negatively to any perceived detachment between the organisation’s words and its actions. Be transparent in strategy, values, career paths and compensation and stick to your word. Honesty is very important for Gen Y who look intensely up to their more experienced peers.
Gen Y are prone to change their mind
After PwC realised that they do not want to have Gen Yers leaving them in order to pursue new career goals, they started to break down artificial barriers within the company. When an employee has been on board a few years, opportunities to try new things increase dramatically. In the face of changing life situations such as becoming a parent, employees are offered positions which require less time away from home. Another initiative allows people to work for PwC during the busiest months and to pursue other interests for the rest of the year.
Contributing to the organisation and the world
Gen Y want to be heard and feel that they are contributing to something larger than themselves. Therefore, PwC now stress the importance of providing Gen Y with the larger context so that they can tie their work to the bigger picture. Gen Y are also more connected to and aware of the greater world, why providing opportunities to participate hands-on in coorporate social responsibility (CSR) projects will be increasingly important, for instance as a part of corporate training programmes. Some studies have indicated that only half as many people leave their current employer, if they have participated in a CSR project during the previous year.
Staffing seniors
Before senior staff are hired by PwC, they are assessed on the degree to which their team members will be given the chance to determine their own working hours and to work remotely. They are also taught to show flexible behaviour themselves, all of which is rewarded in the compensation package.
Selling teams instead of individuals
For instance, in an M&A process, clients may expect the consultants to work 24/7, resulting in burnout having been a major issue at PwC. After having had some tough conversations with their clients, PwC now offer a team available 24/7, but no longer individuals, which is achieved by overstaffing the teams.