They've been labeled as self-assured, disloyal and non-committal workers, but leading demographers believe that Generation Y may be the answer to the problems caused by the public sector's ageing workforce. Angela Dorizas spoke with Bruce Tulgan, author of Not Everyone Gets a Trophy: How to Manage Generation Y, for his advice on recruiting and retaining Gen Y.

GN: Generation Y employees are often labeled as disloyal job-hoppers. Is that an accurate description?

Bruce Tulgan: Well, there are always truths underneath the myths, so I think each of these
‘labels’ is a double-edged sword. I believe that Generation Y has been much analysed but largely misunderstood. Most ‘experts’ are simply reinforcing prevailing misconceptions about Generation Y.

In my book, I spend some time refuting what I call the fourteen biggest myths about Generation Y in the workplace. For example:

Myth: Gen Yers are disloyal. Reality: They offer the kind of loyalty you get in a free market—that is, transactional loyalty (whatever you can negotiate).

Myth: They want the top job on day one. Reality: They have no interest in taking their time to “get a feel for the place.” They want to hit the ground running on day one. They want to make an impact.

Myth: It’s impossible to turn them into long-term employees.  Reality: You can turn them into long-term employees. You’ll just have to do it one day at a time.

Myth: They will never make good managers because they are too self-focused.   Reality: They make perfectly good managers if you help them learn the basics and then practice, practice, practice.

GN: What qualities can Gen Yers bring to the public sector in a time of great uncertainty?

BT: During the life span of Generation Y, globalization and technology have undergone a qualitative change.
World institutions—nations, states, cities, neighborhoods, families, corporations, churches, charities, and schools—remain in a state of constant flux just to survive.

Gen Yers are comfortable in this highly interconnected rapidly changing web of variables. They’ve never known the world any other way. Uncertainty is their natural habitat.

Globalization does not make Gen Yers feel small. Rather, it makes them feel worldly. Technological change does not make them feel as if they are racing to keep up. Rather, it makes them feel connected and powerful.

Institutions may be in a state of constant flux, but that’s no problem. Gen Yers are just passing through anyway, trying to squeeze out as much experience and as many resources as they can.

GN: Why are Gen Yers so confident, even in the midst of economic crisis?

BT: One reason is surely that they grew up in the Decade of the Child. Generation Y was the great over-supervised generation. In the short time between the childhood of Generation X and that of Generation Y, making children feel great about themselves and building up their self-esteem became the dominant theme in parenting, teaching, and counseling. 

Throughout their childhood, Gen Yers were told over and over, “Whatever you think, say or do, that’s okay. Your feelings are true. Don’t worry about how the other kids play. That’s their style. You have your style. Their style is valid and your style is valid.”

This is what child psychologists called “positive tolerance,” and it was only one small step to the damaging cultural lies that somehow “we are all winners” and “everyone gets a trophy.” In fact, as children, most Gen Yers simply showed up and participated—and actually did get a trophy.

GN: How can local government managers attract quality Gen Y candidates?

BT: First, you have to think about what a job “means” to your GenY applicant pool.  What a job means to Gen Yers depends on what’s going on in their lives at any given time.  There are seven job types for Generation Y.

Sometimes they just want to hide out and collect a paycheck. I call this a ‘safe harbor job’. There are no upsides for the employer.

Sometimes Gen Yers take a job while they are still taking stock and trying to figure out what they really want to do next. I call this a ;weigh station job’.

When they take a job in order to spend time with friends, I call that a ‘peer group job’. At least they may look forward to coming to work. The downside is that social relations will be their primary focus.

When Gen Yers find work that aligns with their deep interests and priorities, I call it a ‘passion job’. The upside for the employers is that they will bring energy and enthusiasm to the work. The potential downside arises when the work part of work makes the passion seem more like a grind.

When Gen Yers see a job as an opportunity to work like crazy for some time with the chance of a giant payoff, I call it a ‘big gamble job’.

Sometimes Gen Yers take a job to meet some idiosyncratic and hard to fulfill desire---maybe it’s working the night-shift or working with books or working on a boat. I call this a ‘needle-in-a-haystack job’. As long as you can provide what they really want, you can be pretty sure they won’t leave.

The best case is when Gen Yers are looking at the job as a chance to make an impact at work while building themselves up with your resources. I call this a ‘self-building job’. This is most likely to bring out their best for a sustained period.  When Gen Yers see the chance to make an impact at work while building themselves up with your resources, they are most likely to deliver their best efforts for a sustained period.

GN: What do Gen Yers in ‘self-building’ jobs expect from their managers?

BT: One of the most important things I’ve learned in our research is that most GenYers don’t want to be humored at work if they are in a self-building job. They want to be taken seriously. But they do want work to be engaging. They want to learn, to be challenged, and to understand the relationship between their work and the overall mission of the organization.

They want to work with good people and have some flexibility in where, when, and how they work. They want:

• Performance-based compensation: Gen Yers want to know what targets they need to hit in order to get paid more.
• Flexible schedules: Gen Yers want to know that as long as they are meeting goals and deadlines, they will have some control over their own schedules.
• Flexible location: As long as they are meeting goals and deadlines, Gen Yers want to know that they will have some power to choose their work location or at least arrange their work space to their liking.
• Marketable skill: Gen Yers are eager to acquire skills and knowledge faster than they become obsolete.
• Access to decision makers: Gen Yers want to pursue relationships with important leaders, managers, clients, customers, vendors, or coworkers.
• Personal credit for results achieve:. Gen Yers don’t want to work hard to make somebody else look good. They want to put their own names on the tangible results they produce.
• A clear area of responsibility: Gen Yers want to know exactly what responsibility belongs 100 per cent to them so they can use that as their personal proving ground.
• Creativity: Gen Yers want to know exactly what is up to them and exactly what is not so they can carve out a space in which to do things their own way.

GN: What can local government managers offer Gen Y employees in order to retain them?

BT:  For some time I’ve been arguing against the so many experts who have been writing articles and books arguing that, since Gen Yers have grown up with self-esteem parenting, teaching, and counseling, the right way to manage them is to praise them and reward them with trophies just for showing up.

In the best of times, I was arguing that the experts who tell managers to create “thank-you” programs, “praise” programs, and “reward” programs, absent the other side of the equation are wrong, wrong, wrong.

I was telling employers that what Gen Yers need is not always the same as what they want. The problem is that giving them what they need successfully is much harder than simply handing them what they want.

The high-maintenance Generation Y workforce calls for strong leadership, not weak. Managers should never undermine their authority; should never pretend that the job is going to be more fun than it is; never suggest that a task is within the discretion of a Gen Yer if it isn’t; never gloss over details; never let problems slide; and should never offer praise and rewards for performance that is not worthy of them. Instead, managers should spell out the rules of their workplace in vivid detail so Gen Yers can play that job like a video game: if you want A, you have to do B. If you want C, you have do D, and so on.

GN: How has that changed in response to the global financial crisis?

BT: Now all of a sudden, in the midst of the current economic crisis, some of the experts and lots and lots of managers are starting to say, ‘Maybe now GenYers will get a dose of reality. Maybe now they will learn from hard times. Maybe they will change their attitude. Maybe after this they’ll be willing to keep their heads down, keep their mouths shut, work really hard, and wait for long term rewards.’ What this really means is, ‘Maybe the economic crisis will do the hard work of real management, so managers won’t have to do it.’

The reality is that GenYers right now may well be shell-shocked, dispirited, depressed, and disillusioned.  They’ve lost their bonuses, their friends have been laid off, there are fewer openings to grow into, and they now believe even less than before of what the bosses are telling them.

But while things are bad, just when you need them to dig deep and give you their very best, they are spending their time huddled together (or texting each other from their cubicles) figuring which fabricated (or not) horror story about the company to Twitter about. 

GN: How can managers build up morale and keep Gen Yers focused on the task at hand?

BT: You can’t tell them “hey everything’s great” because they won’t believe you. You need them to feel the urgency of the moment so they will work smarter, faster, and better.  On the other hand, nothing gets done when everyone’s quaking with self-preservation fear.  

Don't make long term promises right now because you have no idea what's going to happen. Plus nobody with half a wit would believe any long term promises right now. But you can make lots of short-term promises in exchange for short-term extra-mile performance. This is exactly the time to get creative with non-financial rewards.|

Use short-term quid pro quos to drive performance, take better care of your people, and get everyone and everything back into an upward spiral. Help every person aim at one small target after another, bank one small win after another, and earn one small reward after another.

GN: Are Gen Yers likely to continue job-hopping even in the global financial crisis?

BT: Most GenYers are paying attention enough to know that right now is not a time to stick out in any way as a problem. Now is a time to keep demands to one’s self. So right now you might find a lot of GenYers laying low and waiting for things to get better. Then we will probably see, hear or deal with a lot of pent up demands and a lot of pent up voluntary-departure activity.

Some GenYers are deciding to go on with further schooling, at all levels, whereas they might otherwise have entered the job market right now.

Some GenYers are smart enough to use any downtime right now to pursue their own self paced learning and other available learning. 

As a result of employers right now trying to get more work out of fewer people and some GenYers are finding themselves stepping in and taking on larger and more diverse bundles of tasks and responsibilities now than they might otherwise have. The result is professional development.