What’s Wrong With Gen Y?

If there’s a topic that tends to incite passionate responses amongst managers, both positive and negative, it’s that of Generation Y and their effectiveness in the workplace.

Some managers claim that they’re amongst their best employees; tech-savvy, innovative and not afraid to challenge the status quo and “the way things are done around here”.

Others claim that they’re unmanageable, with an unrealistic sense of entitlement and no respect for those with experience. Those managers often claim that Gen Y could be good employees, if only they could put away their Facebook for long enough to concentrate on the task at hand and listen to the voices of experience around them.

The question that often comes up then, is:

How Do You Manage Gen Y Employees?

The list of Gen Y stereotypes runs long; ranging from entitled to disrespectful, and unmotivated to downright lazy. What all these stereotypes have in common though, and this goes for any generational generalisation, is that they’re completely false.

A recent piece of research (Beyond Belief: The Management Reality of Generational Thinking) put together by the Australian Institute of Management found that not only are these common Gen Y myths exactly that, but they’ve been said about the newest generation entering the workforce for the last forty years.

In fact, the research shows that there is much more variation within a generation than between them, and labelling entire generations with a stereotyped brush is nothing more than poor management practice.

As a Director of a digital agency where the average is just 26 years of age, I’ve seen first-hand what a passionate and talented team of young people can do. We would not have been able to grow from two staff to over 60 in the last six years if the stereotypes about “lazy and unmotivated” Gen Y were even remotely correct.

In my experience, and this is backed by the research, the way to approach leading or managing employees of any generation is to treat them as individuals, not as one homogenous group. Just because our company is made up predominantly of Gen Y’s does not mean that we take a “one size fits all” approach to our culture either.

Every individual has different motivators and things that matter to them in a workplace, and the key to unlocking an employee’s potential is to find what works for them. This often can be as a result of life stage, for example flexible working conditions for a return-to-work mother, but predicting that based on a generational label probably won’t be very effective.

One of the findings from the research was that poor managers tend to use “shortcuts” when working with low-performing employees (a concept that derives from our tendency to externalise negatives and internalise positives – i.e. we blame others for failure but credit ourselves for success). In the case of a poor performing employee, it’s much easier for us as business leaders to put a young person’s performance down to “classic Gen Y, too busy on Facebook to care” than actually work out whether that person’s performance is the result of our own management failures, a lack of training or something else.

What’s worse is when we then associate that individual’s poor performance with an entire generation, labelling an entire segment of the workforce lazy on the actions of one individual.

It’s also worth pointing out that there are certainly individuals within Gen Y who will match many of the negative stereotypes that get thrown about, but I can also guarantee you’ll find the same behaviours amongst those from other generations too. The difference with Gen Y it seems, is that we’re much quicker to pass judgment and universally apply it to the wider generation.

So going back to the original question about how to manage Gen Y, the answer is simple:

Remove the Gen Y Label

The question then becomes how to manage employees, a question that most will find much easier to answer. Good managers know that to get the best out of any employee, you need to understand their motivations and what makes them tick, work with them to improve areas that need it, and provide support along the way. The specifics of each vary from individual to individual, and it’s by no means easy, but I guarantee it’s going to get much better results than dismissing certain individuals because they happen to be born in a certain date range.

What this research showed, and incidentally is supported by many other studies that have been conducted around the world, is that the problem isn’t with the generation at all. Most of the time the problem is with us as leaders and our “shortcut seeking” management ways.

As managers and business leaders, we have a responsibility to try and get the most out of every employee, and we do that best by forgetting about what generation they happen to fall under, and actually understanding the characteristics and motivations that make them unique.

There will always be lazy, entitled and disrespectful employees (and some will indeed be young), but let’s use the label they deserve: poor performers, rather than tarnishing an entire generation.