Generation Y: Advice for Companies

Generation Yers, those who are "digital natives" and thus grew up in symbiosis with PCs and the Internet, are now being hired by companies. They carry with them their profiles on Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm, and many other Web 2.0 applications. The most marked difference with earlier generations has to do with gratification time. Younger employees are used to have immediate access to information and have a network of connections so vast that they can get instant answers from at least one of their nodes. Then there is the habit of constantly monitoring progress of actions and the passing of time (such as Messenger's interface that visualizes your status and score in video games). If companies just send their Gen-Yers annual evaluation reports, they won't help their young employee fit in the organization, since she/he is not likely to understand whether the road taken was the good one or not. If she/he is inserted in a flexible context with constant feedbacks it is more likely that she/he will reach the desired targets effectively and autonomously. The attitude toward teamwork is particularly developed among Gen-Yers. As kids they were strongly socialized in nurseries, schools, team sports, virtual social networks etc. Replicating this kind of social interaction in the job environments augments their performance. Do not prevent access to Facebook on the job. By eliminating Facebook, you will have forcibly separated young employees' cognitive assets from their wealth of relations, with negative repercussions on their productivity. We cannot ignore that certain skills disappear if they are not backed by the right supports. In other words, if a Gen-Yer is used to relate to her/his social contacts through a computerized network, she/he won't be able to easily adapt to a network of contacts managed through the telephone. Forcing a Gen-Yer to work exclusively in this way will diminsh her/his relational capabilities and will prevent the company from exploiting her/his capabilities for innovation. The best option is to make young people work by using both kinds of channel. Do not shut down the Internet. Gen-Yers have learnt how to link complex information across disparate domains of data. Hypertexts, Wikipedia, blogs have all taught Gen-Yers how to connect information. This has a trade-off: there is a loss in the depth of the information acquired, but an increase in ability to filter vast amounts of data. Generation Y's technophilia was enabled by the abundance of leisure they had as school kids and students. By technophilia, we mean the uncanny familiarity that Gen-Yers have vis-à-vis any digital gizmo. In order to enhance their consumption of technology, Gen-Yers have developed multitasking skills. This seemingly inefficient, even irrational, kind of practice turns out to be the optimal response to sensory overload in the new technological context.

We have thus described the ingrained habits and acquired inclinations of Generation Y. We think that the emerging and widespread social behaviors championed by this generation should be partially accommodated in formal settings such as the workplace. Only this way companies will be able to harness and potential for innovation and the can-do attitude of Gen-Yers. Socializing them into traditional routines is likely to be counterproductive. Clearly, a company cannot be revolutionized only to gratify new entries. But companies must find the right fit, if they want to bridge the emerging chasm between corporate practices and young generations' emerging lifestyles.