CHAPTER 10
The future – how you
need to respond to the
changing world of work
The context
Clearly we are in a time of big and fast technological change – some say, the biggest changes since the invention of the printing press in 1440. These technological changes mean that the world in general moves faster, as people are able to communicate faster and across geographical boundaries. The other crucial piece of context is the changing demographic situation.
Governments all over the world have been aware for a long time of the changes in population trends and the predictions that experts are making. For quite some time they have been looking into how the younger generation of workers are going to be able to sustain a growing aged population. In the UK the fastest growing age group is the over-80s. In Spain, Italy and Germany only around 15 per cent of the population is under age 15; 18 per cent is 65 and over. In China, Japan and South Korea the numbers of young people are falling, not only as a proportion of the total population but also in absolute numbers. In the USA only 20 per cent of the population is under age 15, and 13 per cent is aged 65 or over.
What does all this mean for you? Well, it means that no matter which countries you operate in, you will find that the number of new entrants to the workplace is lower. The best talent will be in high demand, and they will have choices. You will have to compete ever harder to attract them. The organizations that do well will be the ones that really understand the Gen Ys, and how to attract and keep them.
Rookie Buster
The organizations that do well will be the ones that really understand the Gen Ys, and how to attract and keep them.
If you haven’t already got to grips with this issue, it is really important to do so now. Some organizations are finding that, regardless of the economic downturn which is happening at the time of writing, their difficulty in finding enough good people is inhibiting their business development.
Where to start?
Think about the importance of your people, and how you are harnessing the knowledge and skill of all generations in the workplace. Boomers and Gen X have a lot of knowledge and experience in all aspects of running businesses. Gen Y clearly have a deep understanding of new technologies, and therefore different ways of collaborating, learning and working. These people are employees and consumers and can help you figure out what products and services you need to offer to this category of consumer. Being a “first choice” employer for Gen Ys means that you will be able to harness their knowledge, insight and strengths along with those of their older colleagues.
Start by asking yourself these key questions:
1. What proportion of your workforce is Gen Y?
2. What is this figure likely to become over the next 3–5 years?
3. Now also ask the same questions about your customers and consumers.
4. Are you doing anything to specifically help your leaders lead your Gen Ys?
5. What are you doing to appeal to Gen Y customers and consumers?
6. What steps do you already have in place to ensure these young people don’t leave?
7. Are you truly developing and harnessing young talent and providing a culture that fuels an innovative business?
And, importantly:
8. What if you do nothing?
A solution or a problem?
Gen Y are only a manifestation of the massive technological change that is going on around us. We should not get fixated just on whether we, as employers or service providers, are adapting to meet their needs. It is more useful to see them as a catalyst for change, and to understand what opportunities they give us to learn about how we need to change. They can teach us about their world – the world of the digital native. Gen X and Boomers will always be immigrants in that world and will always, to some extent, have to “translate” their own “language” into the new languages.
There are those who are still treating Gen Y like a problem they need to manage. These people have not realized that Gen Y is one indication that we are entering a new paradigm. And only by starting to understand that new paradigm will organizations be able to attract young employees and consumers now and in the future.
Rookie Buster
There are those who are still treating Gen Y like a problem they need to manage. These people have not realized that Gen Y is one indication that we are entering a new paradigm.
The irony is that the world that Gen Y have been brought up in is the world that has been created for them by Boomers and Gen X. Essentially, the older generations have shaped the way that Gen Y are. Until recently it was Boomers and Gen X who were inventing and designing the new technologies, and Boomers and Gen X are the parents of Gen Y. These same people are the ones I hear complaining about how difficult Gen Y is to manage, and the same people who ask whether Gen Y will change as a result of getting older and/or of economic realities. Of course they won’t. We have created an environment that has resulted in a whole new set of behaviours, values and attitudes. The fundamental changes in the world cannot be unchanged, in the same way that Gen Y’s conditioning and learning cannot be reversed – and nor should they be. We need them to be able to understand, respond to and keep on working at this changing paradigm.
Think about what different questions you need to ask in your organization to help you to get to grips with and respond to the changing paradigm. For example, if you are a charitable organization, you may well need to change your question from “How can we recruit new members and donors?” to “How can we channel and support the communities that support our cause so that they attract more people into those communities?” You can see how each of those questions might result in different solutions. The first might mean more content on their website and additional direct marketing campaigns. The latter might mean having some of your employees blogging and twittering about things of interest to the communities in a way that enhances their experience of your organization and therefore increases their loyalty.
A new paradigm
As we have discussed so far in this chapter, it is important to be the sort of organization that Gen Y flock to work for. Having the best talent is essential in this fast-changing world.
Of course, the best organizations do have the best people. But nowadays the best companies realize that this is not enough. An excellent product, top class execution/delivery and a solid strategy are of course critical too.
But, because the paradigm is changing, a new mindset and way of working is necessary. The prevailing mindset was, and still is, a competitive one. Companies would guard their secrets and knowledge about the company. They would know who their competition was and keep an eye on them so that they could continue to stay at least one step ahead. Nowadays that is becoming a less and less sustainable model. The internet means that much more information and intelligence is available to the consumer. And companies can check out what their competitors are doing so much more easily. More and more companies are doing what Progressive Insurance do, which is to share their prices openly and share those of their competitors, even when their competitors are cheaper. The result is loyal customers who trust them.
The internet has made it possible for people to collaborate openly. Linux, which is now widely used and recognized as a reliable operating system for business, started its life in 1991 when a man in Helsinki created a simple version of it and placed it on a bulletin board, inviting others to improve upon and develop it. They had access to it free of charge, and could use it provided that whatever changes they made they agreed to share. This way of working means that you attract a whole range of people, from all sorts of different disciplines and countries, to collaborate on a problem. You are no longer limited to the people you know or who work in your company. When The Economist Group set up a project to develop something new on the web a couple of years ago, the team who worked on it threw their challenge out to the wider community. They received hundreds of suggestions and ideas as well as creating a following, a buzz and an interest. Not all of it was positive – far from it. Some people criticized them for effectively asking for free help to develop what might become a profitable product. However, many more entered into the spirit of enquiry and collaboration.
Gen Y are used to this way of working. They use Wikipedia – a free website that is updated (without payment) by anyone who wants to update. They take this online encyclopedia for granted, whereas although the Boomers and Gen X may use and enjoy Wikipedia, they still compare it with the great big volumes that they had on their bookshelves at home when they were young. They think of it as that website that challenged Encyclopaedia Britannica and the successful encyclopedia publishing model in general.
The point is that if you don’t understand well enough how the world is changing, or if you lose track of your market, you can literally find that your business collapses. This also happened to a certain degree in the stamp collecting field. Young people don’t collect stamps to anywhere near the same degree as the older generations do. The stamp industry did not realize the scale of the issue early enough. It is crucially important to keep on learning about how the world is changing, about new models of doing business, about changing consumer behaviours and preferences and, of course, the impact of changing technologies.
Rookie Buster
If you don’t understand well enough how the world is changing, or if you lose track of your market, you can literally find that your business collapses.
It is not a case of Gen Y setting out to destroy existing companies. It is a case of them experimenting and trying new and innovative ways of working and creating value through exploring different models and technologies.
From power to trust, competition to
collaboration
Having great people is important, but it is not enough. A new competence is necessary to be able to thrive and survive in the changing world. That competence is collaboration. Some organizations can clearly be threatened and put out of business by this new openness and collaborative way of working. Encyclopedia publishers probably did not think of Wikipedia as a challenge to their business model at all to start with, let alone a serious challenge.
Rookie Buster
A new competence is necessary to be able to thrive and survive in the changing world. That competence is collaboration.
Some organizations are embracing collaboration as inevitable and to be welcomed. But it is a challenge because it threatens and calls into question some ways of working and organizing that we have always taken for granted. It threatens the hierarchical model that is the most common model of organizing companies. And it challenges the power base of those at the top of the hierarchy.
Collaboration relies on people openly sharing their knowledge and insight. They have to trust that people are doing this and that they are being honest. This way of being is very familiar to Gen Y. They collaborate via the internet on all sorts of projects for school, for work and for their social interests. They are used to downloading content for free that others have posted, and they are used to sharing what they know. They use their network to rally people to help them on a whole range of projects – collaboration can be momentary and centred around a specific problem or question, or it can be much longer term, for example in the case of scientists working on a project together. Reciprocity and trust are central to collaborative relationships. Trust has always been important in life and business. And the best business relationships are founded on trust. The internet of course challenges us to achieve trust online and overcome all the fear and concerns that it produces.
Rookie Buster
Reciprocity and trust are central to collaborative relationships. Trust has always been important in life and business. And the best business relationships are founded on trust.
But of course there are mechanisms you can use to encourage and reward trust online. For example, the seller rating system on eBay means that consumers reward good service – they rate people on their reliability (did they send the goods when they said they would?) and honesty (did they accurately describe the items?). It is a self-managing system based on trust and social values. Yet when it was first set up sceptics said you could never trust the general public to deliver a good enough service and deliver on their promises. The sceptics have been proved wrong. It was a classic case of different thinking – thinking in a new paradigm. And traditional business people really struggled to see how it would work at the time. Now we pretty much all take it for granted.
Most management practices and organizational models are founded on the (often unconscious) assumption that you can’t trust people, so you have to monitor them via a management hierarchy whose job it is to control those immediately below themselves. This way of structuring organization inhibits improvement and innovation, because you are limiting the number of people that each person has contact with.
Gen Y’s world is not a hierarchical one. Theirs is a network of people with whom they interact for work or pleasure and often both. Even when you put them in a hierarchy (as most organizations do), it is as if they don’t see it. A hierarchy does not of course have a physical presence. It is just a concept. Employees may be shown an organization chart that tells them their position (and relative importance and power). But it does not match with their natural way of working. Hence the cases of graduates emailing senior managers and not “going through” their own line management structure. It is not because they are being disrespectful; it is because they either couldn’t see why they would need to do that, or it didn’t occur to them that they might.
In my HR days I remember always telling staff with grievances or ideas that they should talk to their line manager first. That’s just the way it was done. I never thought about why it had to be that way, let alone questioned that practice. Families used to be much more hierarchical than they are today, with the father at the top of the tree holding more power than the mother, who in turn held more power than the children. For Gen Y that has changed too – they are much more powerful and more often involved in and consulted about family decisions.
It is interesting and ironic that despite the fact that the family hierarchy has “loosened up” over recent years, that loosening-up process is much harder and slower in the workplace. The hierarchical mindset is ingrained in the psyche and mindset of Boomers and Gen X. And so is the hierarchical model of organizations and work.
This presents a great challenge as well as a great opportunity, because Gen Y and the generations who follow them have experienced an empowered existence at home and expect to be consulted. Their way of working is a collaborative way. It is not that they are necessarily shunning the old ways of managing and organizing, it is just that some of these ways make no sense to them.
The Gen Y mindset will inevitably become the dominant mindset because it is in synch with the changing paradigm we have talked about. And as the young people of today become the managers of tomorrow, their way of working will inevitably be the dominant one.
Rookie Buster
The Gen Y mindset will inevitably become the dominant mindset.
Coach’s notes 
These are the most important points to remember from this book. Remember them, and you will avoid pitfalls and seize opportunities to make the most of Gen Y.
1. Gen Y are the way they are because of the very different context that they have grown up in. They are children of the digital age. They won’t change and become like Gen X or Boomers. Their attitudes, values and ways of working are inherently different.
2. Be careful not to assume they are like the other generations – they are not. Making incorrect assumptions has wasted many organizations a lot of time and money (whether it is assumptions about how to attract Gen Y or assumptions about what would appeal to them as consumers). Always ask the question “What is important to the Gen Ys that I am trying to engage?”
3. Gen Ys love to learn, and are keen to learn from their older colleagues. Create an environment where they can learn from one another, and you will be able to release the knowledge, skills and unique strengths of all generations.
4. They will be in short supply as the global population ages. Good people will have a lot of choice about the type of work they do, whether they work for an organization and, if so, which organization they work for.
5. They are your consumers of the future. Understand them now and you will build the knowledge to retain them in the years ahead.
6. Don’t rely on Gen X and Boomers to figure out what products, services and employment benefits will appeal to Gen Y. Instead, just ask them. It is impossible to second-guess what others would find appealing, particularly a group of people who have such different attitudes, values, habits and ways of working.
7. Involve Gen Y in strategy meetings, new product development meetings, meetings to devise graduate attraction strategies – basically, have them involved in any discussions that would benefit from real-life insight into this generation. It is surprising how many employees only see advertising campaigns or new products for the first time when they go public and consumers see them as well. This is a crazy waste of an invaluable resource.
8. See Gen Y as an opportunity – they can help you understand and respond to the changing digital world. If you see them as a challenge to be “managed”, you will get left behind.
9. Constantly update your insight and understanding of your employees and consumers. We are talking about Gen Y in this book, but there is of course another generation coming after them, and they too will inevitably be different in some ways.
Go for it! A lot of what you have read about in this book is ways of working that have been known to be effective for a number of years. Gen Y embody these ways of working because of the conditions that they have grown up in. In the past, organizations could function without changing their ways. Soon they will no longer be able to do that without losing people, or business, or both. Delaying action will only mean that you end up having to make very large (and therefore very expensive) changes quickly. The good news is that you can start with some baby steps that will make a big difference. As long as you have good, deep insight into all generations, and you create an environment in which they thrive, you will be able to leverage all of their knowledge and unique strengths to respond to the changing environment. Good luck!
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