All the way from the United Kingdom, it seems we’re not very good.

Of course, this kind of thing has been circulating for years now. There’s really only two types of Gen Y article. The ones that say we’re brilliant, and the ones that say we’re awful. And doomed. This is the second kind.

“A particularly striking finding is the definite assessment AGR members make that Generation Y graduates tend to be ‘less loyal to the business’ that employs them,” the study said, with some employers complaining that young recruits are “self-centred”, “fickle” and “greedy”.

I love how businesses can blame their EMPLOYEES for for not being loyal. That’s kind of like an electronics store blaming their customers for not buying enough electronics. Or to put it another way: doesn’t it make sense for the onus to be on the employer to FOSTER loyalty in their employees, rather than just expecting their employees to have the quality of ‘loyalty’ for no real reason?

My own personal experience tells me that it is extremely possible for a Y worker to feel loyal to an organization. You just need to give us a reason first.

I can’t really argue with ’self-centred’, ‘fickle’ and ‘greedy’, though.

Some digging around on the newsfeed today led me to an article by Penelope Trunk, who has written a book and maintains a blog. She’s pretty damn fascinating — and a good writer –, and I imagine I’ll be linking to her stuff a fair bit.

Today, though, I want to focus on her claim that Gen Y is inherently conservative. Penelope isn’t using the word in the political sense, of course, instead speaking of the fact that, when you get right down to it, Gen Y really isn’t asking for that much.

But here’s what else is going on: Gen Y does not admit it, but their top priority is stability. This is a fundamentally conservative generation.

Her point is well-taken, but I still struggle with it a little bit, perhaps because I am Gen Y and refuse to admit things. Stability, it would seem to me, is pretty high on the priority list for everyone, regardless of generation. (And, to be fair, Trunk says as much.) To really get at the heart of the issue, you have to break down the idea of stability into more precise chunks. That is, is it financial stability we crave most? Career stability? Social & personal stability? Intellectual stability?

To get the obvious out of the way: everyone needs financial stability. It’s impossible to disregard that, even if some of the Boomers actually did for a while. (The 60s will never happen again.) But Gen Y tends to approach it a little differently, since we’re not starting our career while simultaneously buying a house and paying for baby food. As such, we’re able to focus more on other types of stability, particularly the intellectual.

This isn’t ‘intellectual’ in the sense of reading a lot of books or doing science experiments, but rather it’s framed around the notion that Gen Y is, generally, unwilling to sit at a desk and be bored out of their mind for their career. That’s not to say we won’t work menial jobs — I’m pretty sure Gen Y is driving the call centre industry in North America — but we’re very reluctant to do so under the banner of ‘career’ simply to achieve financial stability.

Instead, we’ll work the bad jobs to achieve money to put towards those intellectual pursuits I was talking about. Be it seeing the world, or starting a business, or just taking a summer off to write a novel. I’d frame it as emphasizing individual stability over career stability. And I think it might even be that the latter is a concept that no longer even exists.

All that said, something Trunk writes earlier in her post really struck a chord with me:

[These companies] get the best candidates because these companies have been the fastest to react to the new workforce conditions that place young people in the driver’s seat .

The driver’s seat is it. There’s the intellectual stability. There’s the individual stability. There’s that continual movement forward. There’s that meaning that Generation Y needs.

Photo by Ozyman. Licensed under Creative Commons

The Toronto Star website is hosting a pdf document called “A Streetcar Toronto Desires” which offers opinions from TTC Chair Adam Giambrone, Transit Advocate Steve Munro and long-time rider Janet May on the City of Toronto’s currently-in-the-works Transit City plan.

Mass Transit is going to pop up fairly frequently as a topic on this blog, both in Toronto and around the world, as I think it’s a vital piece contributing to the success of Gen Y in the workforce. Our pattern has already proven to be different than previous generations, especially as the suburban dream home is generally no longer thought of as the be-all and end-all. Younger workers are choosing downtown condos over isolated cul-de-sacs in droves, which puts an increased emphasis on urban and regional rail transit.

And, of course, with a changing job market that looks to feature a shortage of talented workers, your Y employees are going to be less likely to tolerate (or even consider) a 2-hour highway commute.

Toronto has, at least a little bit, started to understand the critical importance mass transit has on business, and implemented the Transit City plan, amongst other improvements. Other cities will definitely need to keep up if they want to attract talented workers and drive economic success.

Photo by ~AJ. Licensed under Creative Commons

Apparently that’s what a lot of Ontario employers think according to a recent survey. As part of the last provincial election, my province of Ontario will be getting an extra statutory holiday in February. Rather than accepting this as the good news that it is, a lot of people have decided to get ridiculously worked up about it.

The organization e-mailed its questions to 16,500 human resources professionals in Ontario and more than 3,000 responded.

Of those who answered, “40 per cent of Ontario employees will not receive an additional day off for Family Day on February 18 and … 60 per cent of employers anticipate a moderate to significant impact to their business due to the new holiday,” according to a news release.

Unless those 3,000+ HR professionals work for businesses in the manufacturing or service sectors (and they surely do not), then this is an incredibly short-sighted attitude, especially coming on the heels of this article from only a week ago, which claimed exactly the opposite.

Employers may be concerned about lost productivity from Ontario’s new Family Day, but one expert says the Feb. 18 statutory holiday could pay off in the long run.

Roderic Beaujot, a sociology professor at the University of Western Ontario, says employees are working more hours these days and that could lead to burnout and early retirement.

He adds that working fewer hours doesn’t have much effect on productivity or unemployment, but can make a big difference to work-life balance.

It’s baffling that North America has been so slow to adopt what much of the rest of the first world has already come to realize: working a lot does not necessarily translate into increased profits, nor is it the sign of a more committed workforce. Will our employers ever get the message?

Photo by rosefirering. Licensed under Creative Commons

Regardless of how you view the generational breakdown — you can see how this blog breaks down the divide on the about page; you’re Gen Y if you were born after 1980ish — most people tend to agree that this new generation of worker is at the very least significantly different than any that have come before. Some people see those differences as negative — as narcissism, unruly or (and maybe this is just an Australian thing) dangerously violent — while others take a more positive approach. Regardless, change is coming, and employers all over the world need to prepare themselves for this new generation of worker.

What follows is a list a ten changes Gen Y is going to demand of their managers and bosses. They may not do so vocally — many times, they’ll simply voice their displeasure with their feet (by leaving, not by kicking you in the face) — but, over time, the messages below will be heard by anyone who owns or manages a company.
Read more »