Generation CrY

Gen Yers are “least happy” demographic at work. They crave praise. Wah!

Millennials crave praise at work, while their Boomer and Mature co-workers merely want clear directions to do their jobs right, a study by Leadership I.Q., a Washington D.C. firm which specializes in employee motivation states. In a survey of 11,244 workers, only less than a third (30 percent) of employees between 21 and 30 years old recommended their workplace as a place to work. However, nearly half (47 percent) of those aged 61 to 70 stated that they were happy at their current place of employment.

The results came as no surprise to sales and marketing professional Bud Boughton, author of Dad’s Last Letter—Leadership Principles for the Next Generation. Naturally older workers are more satisfied at work, he says. “Those who are 61-70 in this day and age are just happy to be working and receiving a paycheck,” Boughton states. “With issues related to loss of job security, potential deteriorating health, questionable healthcare coverage, and living on a fixed income, why wouldn’t they be happy to be working?”

Writer, consultant, trainer and organizational development specialist Les McKeown also names life stage issues as influences on Boomers’ and Matures’ job satisfaction levels. “Most of what the [Leadership I.Q. study] is alleging about Gen Yers is simply a matter of time and experience,” McKeown maintains. “Of course workers in the older age groups are more satisfied and more likely to recommend their place of work—by the time you are [between] 60 and 70, you've learned through experience what real job satisfaction is and lost the fevered idealism of youth that imagines a paradise at the end of every job search.”

McKeown adds that Boomers and Matures have “discovered what real satisfaction is” for themselves, and they have carved their careers in a fashion to ensure that they have ended up somewhere where they are happy. “What sort of an idiot 60-year-old is still wandering around trying to find out what job might make them happy?” McKeown jokes.

The survey examined satisfaction levels of employees in the public and private companies, and at health-care institutions. Leadership I.Q. Chairman Mark Murphy stated publicly that results indicate that those under age 30 require more praise than their older counterparts, and encouraged doing so, adding that giving praise boosts job satisfaction, productivity, and costs nothing.

Boughton, whose twenty year career includes experience at companies including Procter & Gamble, Xerox and IBM, bristles as these conclusions. “Maybe [Millennials are] unhappy because from their birth they’ve been coddled and cajoled into thinking that they would never have to meet anyone else’s expectations in life as long as they did their best,” Boughton argues. “Many of these young people are the same kids who grew up playing in youth soccer leagues where every kid got a trophy at the end of the season just for putting a uniform on! They weren’t told to go out there and win, they were told to have fun and do their best, that winning wasn’t important,” Boughton, a coach and former college athlete, contends.

“It is never fair to generalize,” concedes Boughton, “but this is a generation that grew up with a better lifestyle than any previous generation in America and unfortunately, in too many cases, had parents who were more interested in being their friends than in being their parents.”

What about the natural trappings of this young life stage? “Life stages are clearly part of the difference here, but many Millennials entering the workforce have a misperception about some of the realities of life,” Boughton says. “They are the epitome of the ‘instant gratification’ syndrome having grown up on microwave food and having lived a third of their lives at Internet speed. Now, combine this with the idealism that typifies any young person in their twenties or early thirties, and one can understand why they are less than satisfied in the workplace today.”

McKeown takes another approach to understanding Millennials. “There is clearly a mixture of both—'Generation Y' singularities and simple life cycle realities,” McKeown states. “However, I believe the second (simple life cycle realities) is a much stronger contributing factor than most analysts give credence to—primarily because it isn't as good a 'read,' and doesn't feed into the cult of the consultant.”

McKeown is critical of research that perpetuates the notion that specialized consultation is required to understand every new crop of employees that enters the workforce. “I really think this latest Leadership I.Q. survey is a crock, as much of the Gen Y nonsense is,” McKeown says. “Yes, they are a distinguishable group, and yes, they do have distinct characteristics, but the conclusions the survey practitioners have drawn are laughably simplistic, and frankly, designed to perpetrate the myth that high paid consultants are needed to 'educate' employers into how to treat this 'new generation.’”

Generation Y Care Instructions

Les McKeown, organizational specialist, concedes that there are ways to best understand the workplace dynamics of Generation Y. He sent his top tips to demo dirt via email. Here they are, verbatim. Enjoy:

To manage Gen Y, and to get the highest productivity out of them, there are some distinguishing characteristics that need to be taken into account. Here are the top five:

1. They're a meritocracy. Boomers “drew within the lines,” “played the game” and arduously worked their way up social and ladders. Xers ignored the “system” and broke (or tried to break) social and career paradigms. Gen Y accepts the need for order and structure, but it needs to be open, transparent and based on merit.

Try to play “dead men's shoes” with Gen Y, use favoritism or make unfathomably weird promotion decisions, and they'll be gone in a heartbeat.

2. They're social extremists. [Gen Yers] flock well. They use social networking skills and tools all day long (after all, they invented it), and the workplace environment needs to reflect this: Lots of cross-functional activity, kaizens (continuous improvement) and communication.

Silo-d, plodding, communication-starved environments scare them, and won't keep Gen Y employees.

3. They're 'default-agnostic'. Boomers were by default 'pro the organization'. Xers were by default anti-the organization.

[Gen Yers] start as agnostics. If it's a good idea, they'll do it. If it's a bad idea, they'll say so. They're not big-eyed optimists like the Boomers, or bitter malevolents, like the Xers (there's a hint of generalization, there) they are genuinely open to simply do what's best.

That means office politics turns them off. So does any expectation that they “swallow the company line.” Yers drink the Kool-Aid a lot less than Wired and Fast Company would have us believe.

4. They're information-driven. They can get it all on Wikipedia and fringe, niche sites (Google and Youtube are so Gen-X!) that they expect exactly the same at work.

For many Yers, their first day in a large organization is like trying to get an Internet connection in China. It's possible to get information, but the quality of it is so thin as to be laughable.

Managing Yers means giving them the information they need to get the job done. Make them plead for it, or don't give it to them, and they'll find somewhere else.

5. They're curious. Yers won't sit in that box you want them to work in. They want to get out and about, ask about stuff, see how stuff works. They're an “open-source” generation who are used to cracking and hacking stuff all the time.

They are wary of anyone who tells them they “can't go there” or they “don't need to know that.” Managing Yers on a “need to know” basis is an oxymoron.

Now, that doesn't mean that they don't understand boundaries—a Gen Yer will understand as well as anyone why they don't need to know the Coca Cola special recipe to work on the bottling plant, but the boundaries have to be reasonable, transparent and based on common sense.

What does this all mean? Workplace solutions are simple. To boost productivity and ensure happy Millennials, give them clear direction, access to the information they need to do their job, encourage and provide the infrastructure for them to collaborate with others, build good amounts of discretion and room for initiative into their job description, and managers should be prepared to make their case and not expect unquestioning loyalty.

Necessity is the Mother of Addiction

Scientists reveal Internet addiction disorder; affects teens, Boomers most.

Technological progress has bred a new addiction among us. Israeli researchers from Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine estimate that ten percent (1 out of 10) individuals suffer from an addiction to the Internet, with mostly teens and people in their 50’s afflicted most (Science Daily).

Psychiatrist Dr. Pinhas Dannon recommends that Internet addiction disorder (IAD) be categorized with other extreme addictive disorders such as gambling, sex addiction, and kleptomania. If left untreated, IAD may lead to anxiety and deep depression.

Currently, mental health professionals group IAD with the more familiar Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), a mild to severe mental health condition generally characterized by ritualistic hand-washing and, as related to the Internet, compulsive Web surfing.

“But we are saying that we need to look at Internet addiction differently,” reported Dannon on behalf of his colleagues from Tel Aviv University and the Be'er Ya'acov Mental Health Center. “Internet addiction is not manifesting itself as an ‘urge.’ It’s more than that. It’s a deep ‘craving.’ And if we don’t make the change in the way we classify Internet addiction, we won’t be able to treat it in the proper way.”

Two groups tend to be affected most by IAD, according to Dannon. Teens are most afflicted, followed by Baby Boomers in their mid-50’s. Baby Boomers suffering from the “empty nest syndrome” are more likely to attempt to ease their boredom or anxiety through the Internet. Symptoms of IAD include sleep deprivation, anxiety when not online, loss of work, isolation from loved ones, and periods of deep depression.

Suggested treatments include the same methods used to treat similar disorders, such as gambling addiction. Talk therapy and prescription medications may be effective, says Dannon, but it is vital to educate mental health professionals in the school and other doctors about IAD.
Addiction specialist Dannon explains that sufferers of IAD are a product of the modern age. “They are just like anyone else who is addicted to coffee, exercise, or talking on their cellular phone. As the times change, so do our addictions.”

Hey, Bro’…Check Out My New House on MySpace!

Generation Y is next in line as the real estate market’s target client.

Water cooler crowds have been abuzz with talk surrounding the real estate market, what with its mushrooming foreclosures and plummeting prices. Such serious discussion has traditionally involved the over-thirty crowd, rather than belly-button pierced, lower-back tattooed, blithely gadget-obsessed twenty-somethings.

But that’s changing. According to a 2006 Century 21 generational survey examining the real estate interests and habits of Baby Boomers (those born between 1946 to 1964), Generation X (1965 to 1978), and Generation Y (1979 to 1994), this youngest adult cohort is buying homes at the average age of 26. This makes first-time home buyers of Gen Y three years younger than Gen Xers and Baby Boomers were when they first bought their homes, with each cohort having done so at the average age of 29.

Members of Gen Y and Gen X also reported a different motive for owning a home than did their Baby Boomer counterparts. While Baby Boomers reported first buying a home due to life stage milestones like marriage or childraising, study participants from Gen Y and Gen X claimed their top motivation was to purchase a home that promised a high appreciation value and would prove to be a "safe investment."

Today, members of Generation Y, also known as Echo Boomers and millennials, are viewed as next in line as the “dominant segment of home buyers," according to the article “Inside the Mind of Generation Y” (Realtor Magazine Online, October 1, 2007). This tech-savvy, investment-minded cohort may become a major player due to its sheer size and resulting spending power, following in the centipede-like footsteps of their ubiquitous Baby Boomer parents.

While indeed a mark of the future, the crop of current real estate clientele “runs the gamut,” according to Edgewater, NJ-based realtor Lisa Shapir. “I have all ages looking for a variety of properties—first-time buyers looking to move out of their parents’ house, people looking to buy homes for their elderly parents who need homes with less maintenance and easier floor plans to maneuver, investors looking to take advantage of the buyer’s market…and commercial buyers and investors,” she tells demo dirt.

Client needs tend to vary according to cohort. Shapir explains that empty-nester Baby Boomers are looking to downsize, while thirty-something Gen Xers, many of which are having babies, are seeking single family homes to replace their townhouses. Meanwhile, many Gen Yers seek out condos and “are initially looking for co-ops because of the lower purchase price, without understanding the financial requirements which they often cannot meet,” she adds.

Communication methods often vary according to the client’s cohort. “Although some Baby Boomers do use email, I find that it is rare that they communicate with me this way. The overwhelming majority communicate with me via telephone and often don’t use cell phones,” Shapir explains. Boomers prefer to be contacted at work or at home, and request information via fax, rather than email, since they are not frequent Internet users, she adds.

This is in marked contrast to the communication style of Generation X and Y. “The younger generations…are the opposite and tend to initiate contact and communicate via email, and less by phone. Most are available on their cell phones and email,” she says. And, while Gen Yers are famous for their text messaging prowess, they may not feel comfortable employing it when dealing with as serious an issue as the housing market. “While texting is extremely popular, I don’t find that many text me when it comes to real estate,” Shapir states.

Does generational cohort greatly influence the client-realtor relationship? As long as the realtor is sensitive to the client’s needs, it has relatively little bearing. While clients frequently react positively to an agent who is close in age, Shapir maintains that “the agent’s personality and ease of forming relationships is also an important factor.”

Although Shapir’s client base varies, she concurs that the future of real estate may well belong to the millennials. “I do agree that Gen Y is the next client base. As the [Realtor Magazine Online] article indicates, since the younger generation is extremely tech savvy, agents and companies need to have a large presence on the Internet, and be mobile. PDAs, laptops, GPS’s and cell phones are critical tools to staying ahead of the competition, and satisfying the ‘instant gratification’ generations,” Shapir explains.

There are specific ways to handle the Gen Y client, she says. “I am always quick to respond to a client’s email…and utilize all the technology I can (including e-fax so I can get faxes wherever I am). I find that the Gen Yers think they have all the answers and begin property searches initially appearing extremely confident.”

That confidence, combined with Gen Y's notorious Internet dependence may play cruel tricks on them when scouting the housing market. Between the deceptively glamorous online apartment photos and their own nascent savings, they may require extra help, or more time before making that commitment. Shapir continues, “Once they see something they like, or realize their money can’t buy them as much as they thought based on their computer searches (since everything always looks different in person), they turn to their families for guidance. Then they will often put off their purchase for a while, unless their families are willing to help them financially.”

Shapir foresees unique challenges ahead for potential buyers. “It will be interesting to see what happens since the mortgage crisis has affected purchasers. Many of the younger generations were getting into homes because of the lenient mortgage down payments and financial requirements. Because of the recent changes in the industry, however, buyers will need more money to put down, better credit, and possibly require co-signers.”

Editor's Note: Lisa Shapir submitted her interview responses to demo dirt via email. Shapir is a NJ-based realtor licensed in New York and New Jersey, as well as a NJ Broker-Salesperson. She may be reached at lisa@shapir.com or at 201-978-2870.