I don’t know a whole lot about being a police officer, likely because I am badly out of shape and kind of a wuss when it comes to the idea of tackling criminals or what have you, but officer.com has an article on Gen Y and the Millennials coming on to the police force that’s very interesting. There are parts I agree with and parts I strenuously disagree with.

Let’s take this point-by-point.

On demographics

Generation Y and the new Millenials that will be crossing your doorway looking for a job. Yes I said job, not necessarily a career, but a job. They may not stay; in fact it is likely they won’t. In the 1980s when I graduated from high school there was one job for every four students. Going to some post secondary school was a better option to wait and see if more jobs opened up. Today, there are four jobs for every student and the new graduates of high school and post secondary institutions have their pick. You may or may not be one of them.

I see these “4 for 1″ stats a lot, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the source. It seems pretty accurate, though, at least in the sense of all that it implies: this is a generation of employees that isn’t going to bend over backwards for you just because they want to keep their job.

On stereotyping

In comes Generation Y (1978-1994). These are our junior constables or new recruits. They have a casual attitude towards superiors and are opinionated and challenge the rules. Their parents were older when they had them and were more babied by their parents. They lived at home late in life – and may still live at home while working for you. They belonged to schools where you were never failed, there was no winner or loser and everyone got a “participant ribbon” just for showing up.

Some good and some bad here. Yeah, Gen Y tends to live at home longer. Often because their parents suggest they do until they can buy a house — there’s a pervasive “renting is throwing your money away” myth at work here. But I think this “participant ribbon” article falls fully into the realm of fantasy myth: I do recall there being things like that at various events, but even as an 11-year-old I knew not to take them very seriously. And there were still ribbons for first/second/third place, too.

I think you’d find it really difficult to find a member of Generation Y who doesn’t, when you get right down to it, have a good sense of what competition means. I think the difference is that we’ve been conditioned to see ‘winning’ as something else entirely than what the Boomers/Gen X are used to.

Here’s a hint: it’s not all about money.

On Gen Y’s future in policing

So now what? Flexible Management Leadership. Demographics don’t lie. Birth rates are down, retirement is up. There is more demand for people in management roles and a dwindling pool of talent for policing. 3% of young people think of policing as a career. 63% never would consider policing as a career. That leaves 34% undecided. It’s time to wake up and reposition ourselves as the employer of choice. Change is not a sign of failure and the failure to change in this case is not an option.

I think by and large policing is going to see the same problem that the skilled trades do now: teachers don’t tell their students about it, so students don’t consider it. There’s also the pop culture stigma: chart the evolution of the cop TV show from the 70s to now. It’s a lot grittier, and I can’t really think of a television police officer who is actually, you know, happy with their jobs.

But the change part is so critical. If I’ve hammered home anything on this blog since I started writing it is that change is at the foundation of real intergenerational progress in the workplace. It’s a bit of give & take, sure, but fundamentally I think most of the change has to come at the management and organizational level.

Photo by nyc arthur. Licensed under Creative Commons

I saw Richard Florida do a Q&A at the book launch event for his latest — Who’s Your City? — last week. Up until then, Florida was one of those guys I had read and heard a bunch about, but never seen in the flesh. He looks a lot like you would expect a guy from New Jersey to look like. Sure, he’s a respected academic but he honestly wouldn’t look too out of place as an extra on an episode of The Sopranos.

He’s also brilliant.

I’ve yet to read Who’s Your City? but in the one-hour Q&A session he shared a number of ideas and themes from the book that are of particular relevance to Generation Y. I thought I’d share them here.

Where you live = most important decision of your life

Florida takes a different tact than Thomas Friedman and his belief that the World is Flat. He agrees that there is globalization and that we are seeing a diffusion of the labour pool across the world, but he also points out that, as this is happening, we’ll still see pockets of talent intensify in certain areas — cities — ultimately creating a labour market that is more spiky than it is flat.

So where you choose to live is still critically important, not only because that’s where the money will be, but also because that’s where the people will be. Florida points out that increasingly people are making decisions on where to live based on a city’s “personality” — the creative scene, the number of single people, etc. It’s not as simple as just “going where jobs are” — the city has to fit.

A lot of cities are missing the boat

Florida’s aroused controversy in the U.S. (and praise in Canada) due to his stated belief that the U.S. is going in the wrong direction and does not have many true ‘creative’ cities. (A lot of this seems to be motivated by his political views, but I don’t necessarily think that’s an irrelevant basis at all.) He points out that a lot of the US is littered with cities that were built on the backs of one industry (ie. manufacturing) and are now empty shells. Further, he says that there are cities that are actively booming currently that are likely destined for a similar fate, especially in the developing world (China, India, Brazil, etc.)

Cities that are destined for real success are those that work to establish their own ‘personality’ and a lot of that, he maintains, has to do with supporting creative industries. If a city isn’t appealing to artists, writers, musicians, stage performers, and so on, it’s not on the right track.

Helping the Valleys

Florida cautioned several times that the overarching message to the book wasn’t a positive one. One of the side-effects of the ‘spiky world’ will be that a lot of places will be stuck in metaphorical valleys — left without economic engines to power them, they’ll stagnate. (And the smart young Gen Y workers with talent will leave in droves for the cities at the peaks.)

He does point out, though, that sometimes it only takes one person or company to raise up a whole geographic area. The obvious examples are Silicon Valley in California and Waterloo in Canada, which were both turned into major economic hubs due to IT companies moving in, but there’s a little bit more to it than just a visionary or two coming to town: what really drives these people to establish their companies in these locations is the previous existence of talented people, ready to come work for them. To get those talented people to come, and stay, it’s important that municipal, provincial/state and federal governments put a strong emphasis in two areas: education and the arts.

Without them, you have no hook.

Despite all anecdotal evidence, a lot of Gen Yers still tend to worry a lot about their potential in the job market. It’s probably due to the experiences their parents and older siblings may have had entering the workforce decades ago, struggling to find anything but the dreaded McJob. It’s so bad that this trepidation sometimes causes people to turtle themselves in academic institutions, piling on degrees and diplomas in the hopes of guaranteeing career potential right out of the gate.

The truth of the matter is that all that education, while undoubtedly important for other reasons, isn’t entirely necessary. Because, in the end, Generation Y’s secret weapon for career success is simply demographics.

Since the first wave of baby boomers reached the age of 60 in 2006 and have entered retirement, an increasing number of professionals are leaving the job market each year. So it’s not surprising that more than 80% of employers say they are concerned about a looming shortage of qualified workers.

There’s little reason today for Gen Y to fear the job hunt (though obviously this can’t hold true for all sectors — some are in steep decline) because there are simply more job openings coming down the pipeline than there are workers.

That said, the word ‘qualified’ in the above quote is extremely important. More on that in a later post.