How To Work With Young People
Filed Under Marketing
When multigenerational communications consultant Cam Marston first warned HR people that the ‘generation gap’ threatened to become a chasm into which good but misguided intentions and company profits could tumble, they said the idea was ‘cute’ but took no action.
Twelve years have passed since Cam Marston, a consultant who specialises in multigenerational communications and marketing, told an assembled group of HR professionals that a generation gap of mammoth proportions was looming. Since then as the cracks have begun to show in offices across the developed world, tens of thousands have flocked to his seminars and snapped up his book Motivating the “What’s In It For Me?” Workforce (Wiley, 2007), anxious for someone to explain what the heck is going on!
Those HR professionals who once chuckled at the idea are now on the phone daily, begging Marston and others like him to help deal with the chaos caused by managers with one set of values and expectations and two generations of employees with completely different values - the recruitment headaches, the low staff morale, the retention problems, as well as the increasingly perplexed management who just don’t understand what makes those young people tick.
The key to motivating young employees is to understand they have very different values from people in preceding generations, says Marston.
He believes the ‘Generation X-ers’ (people aged between 28 and 42) and the ‘Millennials’ (people aged 27 or under) have rejected the traditional workplace values that so inspired the ‘Matures’ (people aged 62 or over) and the ‘Baby Boomers’ (people aged between 43 and 61). Younger workers are less loyal to their organisations and more possessive of their free time.
Time-honoured traditions don’t interest Millennials and Generation X-ers, says Marston. “Their definitions of loyalty, time and success are often quite different from those of the Baby Boom generation. They are unconcerned about how things have always been done. They don’t care how their managers got where they are. They are focused, often single- mindedly, on what it will take to get where they want to go.”
The Matures (who make up about 5% of the workplace) and the Baby Boomers (about 45% of the workplace) invested in the concept that if they worked hard, they would climb the corporate ladder, and eventually earn rank and privileges (’perks’). The Generation X-ers and the Millennials don’t share that same definition of success and therefore present a challenge to those now in ‘control’ - the Baby Boomers in management.
“The younger generations view their predecessors’ experience as a warning, not a road map. And the traditional rules of management, motivation and reward fly out the window.
“Many employers say that this is precisely what they’re seeing. They describe how this simple change in philosophy is having enormous repercussions in the way they manage, motivate, recruit, and retain employees. To remain competitive in their workplace they have to change everything from how they communicate with employees to the reward systems used to motivate them.
“The key to an organisation’s future success is understanding how the Millennials view the world and using that knowledge to motivate them in a way that works. Here’s a hint: meet them where they are and they will achieve your underlying goals; try to force them to fit your definitions and they will run for the door every time.”
Strategies like that can explode your small business quickly, that’s why I’d suggest you go right now to http://www.freemarketingbook.org and request a copy of Jonathan Jay’s new book “Marketing Secrets of a Multi-Millionaire Entrepreneur”
Copyright SuccessTrack 2009
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