Enough Already!: Bosses Say “No!” to Gen Y

By Roxanne Emmerich

You won’t like this article—especially if you are a Gen Y. For this, I apologize and I know I can’t not write it because this situation has become the red hot issue of the workplace. Ever feel like Faith Popcorn? She was the author of The Popcorn Report who used to go to airports, ask people questions and spot trends with great predictive value. In the last two weeks, I feel like Faith. It seems everywhere I go, all I hear from leaders is their anger and outrage over Gen Y—the “millenniums” born between 1980-1995.

Five CEOs told me in the last week that they won’t hire Gen Y any more. I hadn’t even brought it up! One said he can’t figure out why they are so self-consumed and despite all best efforts to engage them, they are only looking out for themselves.

Are they self consumed? Eighty-one percent of 18- to 25-year-olds surveyed a Pew Research Center poll said getting rich is their generation's most important or second-most-important life goal; 51 percent said the same about being famous. Yes, I’d say it’s safe to assume many of them are. Of course, like anything, there are always exceptions and dangers with generalizations.

How did boomers go wrong raising these kids? One CEO who said she’s through hiring them said, “The problem is that Mr. Rogers told them they were “special” and so they think the world revolves around them.” Another said, “They are used to getting positive reinforcement every few seconds with video games, they had a graduation party for “graduating kindergarten” and received stars for every little accomplishment and so they feel someone needs to tell them how great they are at least every few minutes or they start looking for a different employer who will!”

One said that they treat their employers and coworkers with disrespect because “All they want to do is work a little between extended vacations, travel to other countries, and their yearly job hop that comes any time their supervisor requests them to raise the bar.”

Are these people I ran into the last few weeks alone in their assessments? Not according to the research:

·         87 percent of all HR professionals say Gen Y workers feel more entitled in terms of compensation, benefits, and career advancement than older generations.

·         74 percent of employers say Gen Y workers expect to be paid more

·         61 percent say Gen Y workers expect to have flexible work schedules

·         56 percent say Gen Y workers expect to be promoted within ONE YEAR!!

·         50 percent say Gen Y workers expect to have more vacation or personal time

·         And, 55 percent of employers feel Gen Y workers have a more difficult time taking direction or responding to authority than other generations of workers.

A friend of mine, a psychologist and dean of a medical school said he did some research and discovered Gen Y said their biggest request of boomers is that they get more respect from them. Boomers were fairly unanimous in their response to this request in his survey and responded to that information with a simple question, “For what?”

A Harvard Economist recently made a prediction that we will soon become economically behind China as Canada now is to the United States. Many futurists are predicting that this generation won’t make anywhere near the standard of living of their parents. It seems obvious since they short change themselves of fully growing into understanding of anything in depth by job hopping often and having the door bang their butts as they run out at 5:01.

It’s not just a problem here. Business owners in Australia feel that members of Generation Y were found to be "demanding, impatient, and bad at communicating," according to a 2007 survey. It also revealed that almost 70 percent of those surveyed found their Generation Y workers to be “dissatisfying, with poor spelling and grammar and no understanding of appropriate corporate behaviors.”

Employers are figuring out that meeting the demands of Gen Ys is not cost effective or practical. What can you do? That’s a great question. I usually write with solutions but I’m not so sure there are any that really solve the problem. 

If you’re an employer, you can make your workplace more fun and more “purpose driven.”  Those are the two most important things you can do besides the costly items like vacation and compensation listed above. That will give you a better positioning in attracting them—if you want them.

The problem is, even if you create that, they will still leave you quickly for travel, and other interests. You’ll want to make sure they are in jobs that can be trained for easily as you will replace often. Perhaps a strong recession could cause employers to unemploy enough of them and reduce wages for enough others that they will discover the correlation between contribution and pay. They have had the upper hand with low unemployment and a strong economy but that could change.

If you’re a Gen Y, know you’ll have the world by the tail if you choose to be a contrarian and stick with things, accept feedback as a growth tool, work out of contribution and until the job is done, and give your heart to what you are doing. You will indeed become rich and famous because you will stand out in the crowd who will soon be the “underemployed” as their resumes begin to tell their story.

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