Engaging young guns

They are known by various monikers including ‘Millennials’, ‘iGeneration’ and ‘Echo boomers’ – but are most commonly referred to as ‘Generation Y’ or ‘Gen Y’.

According to statistics, Gen Y, people aged between 15 and 29 years old, make up more than 25% of the world’s population. In addition, in countries such as China and India, more than 200 million people and more than 500 million people, respectively, are under the age of 25 years old.

The comprehensive report, Generation Y and the Workplace Annual Report 2010 found that Gen Y is grabbing attention in the workplace for a number of reasons. While they are entering the job market in numbers, they do not make up for the gap left by many retiring Baby Boomers (those between the ages of 45-64). Also, they have brought about different social and business transformations from previous generations of employees.

In a bid to win the talent war, organisations realise the potential of this group of employees and are actively seeking to recruit, engage and retain them.

Business case for engaging Gen Y

Gen Y employees, however, have a reputation for being needy and more demanding than their coworkers. In the book, Not Everyone Gets a Trophy: How to Manage Generation Y, the author says that as Gen Y employees “both disregard authority figures and yet demand a great deal of them”, this makes them difficult to manage. However, he also states that if managers want “high performance out of this generation” they “better commit to high-maintenance management”.

Employers affirm that this group of young workers have many key qualities that make them assets to organisations. However, they advise that employers must also take their time to understand this new breed of employees.

Devyani Vaishampayan, Global HR Director of AET Tankers, says: “What we see as Gen Y as a small population now, in about 10 years’ time is going to be more than half of your employee base. If you don’t take the effort to understand and prepare for that, your organisation is not going to be ready in really engaging and retaining your employees.”

Gen Y employees are known to be tech-savvy, care for a work-life balance, are results-oriented, highly collaborative as team-players as well as good at multi-tasking. Moreover, they want their work to be meaningful.

“I think they are not hung up about titles and promotion because it is important for them that whatever they do is meaningful. They are very passionate about it and engagement levels can be high,” notes Vaishampayan.

Moreover, she says that Gen Y employees are also “globally savvy which is a big strength for organisations which are increasingly getting international”.

Employers also think that they are innovative and highly creative. Suresh Nair, Director and Executive Coach of CELLS Management, says that this group of employees are high performers. “The outcome of work can be of very high quality. They are creative and always looking at different ways to do things, this will help companies to be productive and relevant.”

Retaining young employees

Among the different generations of employees, Gen Y are recognised for being interested in moving to find the right job. The study, Kelly Global Workforce: The Evolving Workforce found that 85% of Gen Y participants stated that they would move to find the right job.

With such high mobility, organisations are using various ways to engage their Gen Y employees in order to manage the expectations of these workers. Retail company, Robinsons & Co. has several programmes to engage its young workforce.

Chee Nian Tze, General Manager, Group Human Resources of Robinsons & Co. states: “We start by ensuring we have a rigorous induction programme to make newcomers feel at home as soon as possible. We also engage the Gen Y employees on social front.” The company has various planned activities (such as teambuilding) so that “they feel that they are part of the team”.

As Gen Y employees like to know a reason before carrying out tasks, she says the company offers various communication platforms to “voice their opinions” as well as for them “to understand the company’s business directions and policies”.

Nair states that his consultancy uses a good “growth policy” to retain young employees. “To keep and retain Gen Y employees, you have to showcase their growth path in the organisation and what is it in for them. This will yield good attitude, loyalty and positive vibrations at the workplace.”

Moreover, CELLS conducts quarterly appraisals and provides constant feedback on performance as well as incentives for high performance. Also, Nair has a weekly reflection and journaling session for his team in India, during which employees get to write about their performance and the experience of their learning. Nair answers each e-journal entry personally to offer advice, which helps the employees reflect, learn and grow in their performances.

However, some experts state that besides adopting strategies to engage Gen Y employees, companies should look at their fundamental recruitment strategies. Vaishampayan of AET Tankers says that organisations need to accept that employees will be staying a shorter time and adopt cost-effective recruitment strategies. “Organisations need to have more nimble or cost-effective ways of recruiting so that they are not investing too much money bringing in people and out of the organisation.”

She also mentions that organisations should involve Gen Y workers in a “variety of work and projects within the organisation that will keep them for a longer time, than somebody who comes in assuming that they will be doing the same job for the next five years”.

Creating a multi-generational exchange

Employers say that Gen Y employees need to learn to work with other generations, and companies are ensuring that there is a cross generational exchange at their workplaces. 

“We strive to create a culture that is generation friendly and we have social programmes that cater to the interest of different generations,” says Robinsons’ Chee. “We also try to create opportunity for the different generations to work together on projects.”

Gen Y employees too can do their part to collaborate with older workers, and Nair says that they should seek a mentor or coach to help them “in the finer points of work and life”.

He also believes they should work through face-to-face interaction instead of through technical gadgets. Moreover, he states that Gen Y should “learn to build their EQ skills, which is very important both in life and at work.”

Some experts believe that companies should not become focused on just ‘generational thinking’ but should be willing to engage workers of all generations. Anu Sarkar, Regional Lead of Diversity (APAC) at Deutsche Bank says that “organisations should remember that in their focus to keep talking about Gen Y, they should not be excluding other generations”.

“When organisations design their diversity strategy, they should look at how to engage people from all generations. Also, each generation of workers gives you the most in that point of time,” says Sarkar, who concludes that it is “important for organisations to create a culture of ageless thinking”.