|
08.07
Pulling
Performance Out of Generation Y
By
Elizabeth Lions
I always say: behavior is
behavior is behavior. People do things or don’t
do things for a reason. No employee wakes up at
six a.m., hits the snooze button and thinks,
Hey, I'm not going to perform at work today.
It just doesn’t happen that way.
For managers, pulling
performance from employees is a daily challenge.
To complicate their task, this is the first time in American history
that managers have had to motivate a workforce
comprised of three generations, each bringing a
different set of values and skills to the
table. In today's workplace, it's not uncommon
to see
50-year-olds sitting next to (or even reporting
to) 20-somethings. Managers are already familiar
with Baby Boomers and Generation X, and know how
to get more out of them, but what about
Generation Y?
Generation Y is the generation
between 14 and 24 years old, born from both the
Boomers and Gen X. This group of 70.4 million
Americans is a generation full of
innovation, fresh ideas and technology. By 2010,
Generation Y will make up 32 percent of the
population. While these young people can run
circles around older employees gathering
information on the Web and using technology,
Generation Y has also been called the
"entitlement generation" — self indulgent and
full of overzealous self esteem.
Employers from the Baby Boomer
era and Gen X have a love-hate relationship
with Generation Y’s ideas and world view. For
some employers, Generation Y's attitude and
"style" are a breath of fresh air; for others,
it feels like a bit too much self expression.
Accepting Generation Y's differences can be a
tough pill to swallow for a conservative manager who just wants
good employees who show up on time, dressed
neatly, to work an eight-hour shift.
Understandably, it’s hard to
comprehend all that youthful moxie when you’re
the one with the "help wanted" sign in the
window. But before writing off a Generation Y applicant
— despite the fact that the candidate's
interview
responses were under whelming and vaguely
insulting — remember that if you
know what makes them tick, you’ll understand how
to get what you want out of them.
He With the Best Leaders Will
Win the Talent Wars
As the
market tightens, an employer will go from "must
have at least 5 years experience" to “will train the right person.” It’s a humbling
shift, one that demands that companies run lean,
know their market targets, and get products
launched on time and within budgets. Before you
know it, the twenty-something will start to look
very good to you as a new employee.
Following are some simple strategies
for leading Generation Y and getting the
most out of them:
Set Expectations
Here’s one I learned from home.
It’s so crazy it actually works. Our 16-year-old
son, Cody, wanted to make some extra money.
Because I was brought up in a household that
taught me to earn money and not just get 20
bucks handed to me, I saw the value in creating
a project for him. The project was partially
research and partially data entry for my own
business. The assignment was simple. We were
about to create a client list that I would call
on each morning to generate new business. From
my perspective, I felt that I was taking an
enormous amount of time explaining what I wanted
done and where to get the information to do the
job. To anchor my teaching, I explained to Cody
how important this task was to all of us. It was
an opportunity for him to make some money to buy
an iPod, but the overall job was critical. I
painted a big picture, showing him that if he
did his job, I could go make more money and
bring that back into the family, thus improving
his lifestyle. He seemed to get that, which
amazed me. When he wanted me to rush through the
information, I did. It was his way of telling me
that he got it. To ensure that he did, in fact,
get it, I sat by him as he researched the first
couple of companies and made entries. To my
amazement, after the project was finished, he
asked me several times if he had done it
correctly.
Employers share with me that
Generation Y quickly find themselves going into
a rabbit hole by digging endlessly online for
more information, losing sight of the task at
hand. What I learned is you can trust them to do
quality work; you just have to check on them now
and again. Turning them loose could put you
behind schedule or frustrate both of you.
Setting expectations should include a short list
of what you want done, a timeline and the most
important part to them — why you want it done.
Feedback Is Your Friend
Again, it’s one of those things
that may seem arduous, if you're an employer,
but feedback with this generation works wonders.
Generation Y wants to know how they are doing,
are they doing it fast enough; are they hitting
the mark? If possible, they want this information on a daily
basis. Not telling
them how they are performing leaves them quickly
feeling left in the dark, and they may ultimately
leave that organization.
Recently, I interviewed a
Generation Y employee who shared with me that he
hated his current job and his manager. He
didn’t understand why he had to do his daily
duties. He shared with me that a monkey
could do his job and that it didn’t seem
important at all. My suggestion to him was to go
ask the employer to fill in the big picture.
Feedback can be used as a
powerful tool in order to pull good behavior out
of a young employee. It also gives you an
opportunity to sandwich some things you’d like
to see changed in the behavior. I used to call
it the P-N-P sandwich. It works like this: take
some positive feedback, sandwich it with some
negative feedback and then close with some more
of the good stuff. To be totally honest, I never
thought this approach would work because it was
so subtle. My style is to be very direct, but
for some, it’s too direct. This P-N-P technique works
well with Generation Y overall.
It sounds like this:
“Peter, I really liked the
drawings that you produced for the project. They
are accurate as well as aesthetic. However, I
would like you to make sure that you are hitting
your deadlines and getting your stuff in on time
because that effects the launch date of the
product. Overall, I’m really pleased with your
work.”
What you just told him — in a
nice way — was to pick up the speed, and why you
need it done faster. He goes back to his desk
smiling and you stand back and watch to see if
the behavior changes.
Take Them Seriously
One of the biggest complaints I
hear from Generation Y is that they are not
taken seriously in the workplace. Older co-workers can give the impression that the younger
generation has nothing to offer them. Some of
the rudest set-tos I’ve witnessed in the
workplace have involved
older workers making a
big point of letting Generation Y know they
don’t want to work with them at all on any
project. Beaten down, Generation Y’s performance
will slip, until they are walking out the door,
hoping to find another workplace that will treat
them better.
I talk to engineers of all ages
who consistently say they don’t feel valued in
the workplace. Feeling valued is a personal
thing, and it’s no different for Generation Y.
Some of their ideas may not be compatible with
your system at all, which is understandable.
Lacking long-term business knowledge, they don’t
know what their ideas are lacking. Instead of
squashing their creative energy, though, take some time
to listen. It’s the biggest gift that you can
give to any employee and it costs nothing.
Another set of eyes on a process is a good
thing, and they may surprise you and come up
with an effective shortcut.
Result Driven, Not Time Clock
Driven
At the end of the day, if one
number is bigger than the other on the
accountant’s spreadsheet, you are profitable.
Likewise, if the other number is bigger, you could go bankrupt. In today’s
fast-paced business world, it’s all about
results. How much money did you make last
quarter? What are the current stock prices? It
doesn’t seem to matter if you are Fortune 500
Company or a company with revenues of 5 million
— we are all competing and striving towards
profitability.
Generation Y tends to be result
driven.
Some organizations are time
clock driven, meaning, if you are sitting in
your cube from eight to five, surely you're getting
your work done. Perception outweighs
performance. Typically, in these same
organizations, politics also outweighs
performance. That type of mentality doesn’t
square
with Generation Y’s idea that work is portable
24/7. Not that they will work 24/7, but they
could be working at any time, in any place that
a wireless computer or a blackberry goes.
Productivity has a new meaning in 2007, where
you can be sitting waiting for a plane in an
airport and still be catching up on e-mails.
Growing up immersed immersed in technology,
Generation Y sees work as something that can be
done any time and anywhere, not just in a cube.
The entire concept of structure is a bit foreign to
Generation Y,
which can be alarming for an employer. My
suggestion is to find a way to meet them
halfway, if your company culture allows it.
Best Buy is an excellent
illustration of smashing the time clock. No
large organization has been as bold and as
generous to their employees as this company.
Work looks different at Best Buy. Your neighbor
in the next cube over may suddenly get up and
leave at 2:25 for a movie, stating his work is
done for the day. The admin may stroll in at
9:05 after dropping off her kids from school.
The customer service manager may leave work at
3:30 to get herself to her son’s football game
for three months out of the year. To the CEO’s
amazement, productivity is up 35 percent in
2007. Turnover is at its lowest point across the
board.
Never before has the definition
of the work day been challenged this much — and
it will only become more so in the future. The
driver for such change will
be Generation Y’s unwillingness to do
time clock driven tasks over performance driven
jobs. We like to talk a lot about
work/life balance in an organization. To many
employees it feels like a over-used catchphrase
that's a great idea on paper, but hasn’t been
implemented anywhere. Generation Y will serve as
the catalyst for that change.
Dozens of articles have been
written on Generation Y, about
how frustrated and disappointed we are with
their work habits (or lack thereof), drive,
ambition and follow through. This is a time for
opportunity for growth, as leaders and as
fellow employees. Pulling performance out of
Generation Y doesn’t have to be exasperating.
With the right strategy, you can add Generation
Y to the team and discover that their fresh new approach to work
benefits the entire team. Who knows, they may
end up teaching all of us a few things about
tolerance and patience.
 Elizabeth
Lions is proprietor and president of Solid
Staffing, in Portland, Ore., where she works
with placing and counseling engineering talent.
She can be found online at
www.elizabethlions.com. Comments may be
submitted to
todaysengineer@ieee.org.
|
E-mail
this page to a friend
