Appendix

Checklist: How Gen Y friendly is
your organization?

Insight

1. Do you know what proportion of your workforce is Gen Y?

2. Do you know why they were attracted to come and work for you, and to what extent you have fulfilled your recruitment promise?

3. Do you understand what is really important to your employees and potential employees?

4. Do you regularly involve Gen Y in discussions about employment practices and listen to their views?

5. Do you have a good understanding of which of your practices and policies appeal most to which generation in your workforce?

Attraction and recruitment

6. Do you attract the calibre of Gen Y that you need?

7. Do you know what benefits appeal to your potential hires and why?

8. Do you know to what extent your communications media and messages appeal to Gen Y?

9. Do you hire people on their strengths as well as their competences?

10. Do you retain most of your Gen Ys, or do you over-hire expecting to lose some of them?

11. Do you recruit for the skills needed for the changing world of work, e.g. collaboration, listening and building trust-based relationships?

12. Do you hire the best people, whether or not they are graduates?

13. Have you changed your attraction and recruitment processes and methods to reflect the changing world of work and the nature of Gen Y as employees?

Engagement

14. Do you know what engages your Gen Ys?

15. If you have an engagement survey, does it reflect the values of all generations?

16. Do you teach your managers how to be engaging managers?

17. Do your communications strategy, content and style suit Gen Y’s preferences?

Management

18. Do you have excellent mentors?

19. Do you teach your managers mentoring skills?

20. Do your managers understand Gen Y and how to manage them?

Organizational culture and communications

21. How collaborative is your organization culture?

22. Does your organization have a high-trust culture?

23. Do people feel comfortable challenging managers/senior managers?

24. Do managers/senior managers see Gen Y as a problem or an opportunity?

25. Do you have two-way communications channels?

26. Are your communications media, content and style Gen Y friendly?

Learning and development

27. Do you understand how Gen Y learn?

28. Do your development offerings and interventions reflect the preferences of all generations?

29. Do your trainers and facilitators understand Gen Y and how to design effective learning for them?

Team working

30. Do your employees understand different generational preferences?

31. Do you teach your people how to work effectively in cross-generational teams?

Career development

32. Do you understand what “career” means to your Gen Y employees and potential employees?

33. Do you regularly discuss their career progression and aspirations with your Gen Y employees?

34. Do you train your managers to help Gen Y to develop their careers and have excellent career development conversations?

Retention

35. Do you know why people stay?

36. Do you know why people leave?

37. Do your employees recommend you as an employer?

Using Gen Y’s skills and unique strengths

38. Do you involve your Gen Y employees in developing your strategy and in designing and developing your products and services?

Top mistakes and top tips

Communicating with Gen Y

Top mistakes

• Power and status seen as more important than contribution.

• Communications one-way and written by Boomers and X-ers.

• Collaboration not encouraged.

Top tips

• Use up-to-date technologies for communication.

• Avoid spin.

• Have Gen Ys write your communications (style and content will be very different).

• Encourage participation.

• Organize networking activities.

• Create physical collaborative spaces.

• Create online collaborative spaces.

Managing Gen Y

Top mistakes

• Assuming they are like the other generations.

• Mistaking challenge for insubordination.

• Mistaking their ways of working for slacking/sloppiness.

• Monitoring not mentoring.

• Failing to give rationale for decisions.

• One-size-fits-all policies.

Top tips

• Create meaning and purpose as well as goals.

• Respect the knowledge and wisdom of both young and old.

• Show interest in individuals.

• Mentor not manage.

• Prefer trust over power.

• Support them, but let them get on with it.

• Manage the outcome, not the process.

Attracting and recruiting Gen Y

Top mistakes

• Not understanding what is really important to them.

• Not treating them as individuals.

• Using communication methods and styles that may not appeal.

• Ignoring key influencers.

• Relying too much on technology.

• Using “sifting” criteria that cut out a lot of good people.

Top tips

• Know their values as well as their interests.

• Talk to them in their language; avoid spin.

• Focus on their strengths.

• Use actions as well as words to show how good you are.

• Make sure your benefits have Gen Y appeal.

Developing Gen Y

Top mistakes

• Boomer/X-er style delivery.

• Failure to see learning as an ongoing process.

• Focusing too much on off-the-job.

• Providing development activities that don’t appeal.

• Hiring trainers and consultants who don’t understand Gen Y.

• Not realizing that learning is a source of stimulation and therefore engagement.

Top tips

• Understand them, their strengths and their interests.

• Make sure they know how to learn from and use the resources around them.

• Assign them to a (passionate) mentor.

• Constant feedback.

• Talk about what they are learning – a lot!

• E-learning solutions: on-demand, searchable, self-directed, YouTube-like.

Career development

Top mistakes

• “Career-ladder” mentality.

• Process above practicalities.

• Not helping people to understand their strengths and inherent talents.

• Treating people as a homogeneous group and not understanding what is important to individuals.

• A “secret” talent pool approach.

Top tips

• Understand what motivates each person.

• Make the most of their uniqueness instead of squeezing into an “all-rounder” box.

• “Teach” them how to learn – a crucial career skill.

• Emphasize continuous learning.

• Engage managers and mentors in ongoing support.

• Work with them to set up a peer network.

Cross-generational teamworking

Top mistakes

• Not understanding the teamworking styles and preferences of different generations.

• Running teams in a hierarchical way that doesn’t value the contribution of each member.

• Not understanding the strengths and unique contribution of each person in the team.

• Forcing each team member to work in the same way without taking account of their individual style and preferences.

Top tips

• Teach teams how to work well together.

• Help them understand generational differences.

• Focus on the team process and the individuals as well as the task.