I keep seeing articles like this one (featuring quotes from the talented Penelope Trunk) saying that Generation Y isn’t all about the money. The conclusion, often, is this:

•Work is not about the money. Young people watched their baby boomer parents work hard and get laid off, Trunk said. “Consequently, they really do believe life is about relationships,” she said. “It’s insulting if you offer to pay them to work the weekend.”

I tend to agree with this, as it’s certainly true in my case. I seriously wonder about my friends going to lawschool - I know they’re after the high-paying salary, but do they really want to end up working so much?

I worry, though, that the stigma that Gen Y is after more than a salary will translate into some employers think they can pay us nothing as long as they let everyone leave the office early on Friday. It is not, as some might think, that we’re willing to sacrifice a high salary for increased flexibility — rather it’s that we’re not willing to let a high salary dupe us into devoting our whole lives to work.

And then there’s the fact that we tend to be savvier when it comes to money, and how it works. Since we get married later, have fewer kids later in life and tend not to have the same kind of giant-house-in-the-suburbs dream as our forebears, we’re not as likely to end up in the same need-a-giant-steady-paycheck-above-all-else situation. (That’s not to say Gen Ys don’t have their own issues with debt — it’s just a different kind, what with credit cards and all.)

And, finally, there’s charts like this — from this article — , showing that the relationship between your job, the hours you work, and the money you make isn’t as clear cut as you might think:

Interesting stuff, isn’t it?

The Toronto Star recently published an article about Generation Y’s attitude toward retirement plans and banks in general. The interesting bit:

At the same time, the generation born between 1977 and 1994 – also called the millennials or echo boomers – tend not to visit their bank branches and talk to advisers about investing and financial planning advice.

“They are young, have grown up in a technological age and are very comfortable with computers,” says Dmitri Mastoras, regional manager with BMO Retail Investments.

“Visiting their local bank branch is not one of their regular habits.”

The technology piece is huge. Thinking back over the past year, I have only physically gone into my local bank branch twice: once to see if I could get some Euros there (I could, but not a lot!) and once to cash a bond my parents bought for me when I was younger.

Other than that, I do all my banking either online or through the machine. And I think most of my peers would echo that. If there was a simple way to contribute to an RRSP or make investments through the web interface, I might be liable to do it, but — at least with the bank I use — there is not.

It’s a key point when dealing with Gen Y: making us call you is a red light. If we can’t find the info or functionality we’re looking for on your web site, it might as well not exist. The article tends to hint that Gen Y doesn’t invest because it’s not a priority for them, but I suspect it has far more to do with the accessibility (or rather lack thereof) of doing such things without having to either pick up a phone or physically go into a bank.

A postscript on retirement

Also from the above article:

Many generation Y investors might be saving for shorter-term goals such as buying a house or going back to school to further their education rather than retirement.

Financial advisers believe this generation should be taking more ownership for their financial future.

The whole concept of ‘retirement’ needs to change. It doesn’t really make any sense when no one actually considers it likely (or at all possible, really) that they’ll spend their whole life working one job. Also, is it just me, or does 65 kind of seem like it’s a little bit young to just stop working completely?

Photo by benchilada. Licensed under Creative Commons

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

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.
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