Illustration by Matthew Smith
These kids today …
Ranting about the new crop of college graduates’ irrevocably eroding the American work ethic is as cliché as raving about the old-timers’ dogged aversion to anything new … but this time, the anecdotal evidence of a shift in the latest generation’s attitude toward work is too jarring to ignore.
Speaking with human-resources professionals across the metro area, one hears that the under-30 crowd take and return text messages during job interviews, care more about vacation time than money and accept a job offer only to not show up on the predetermined first day of work. Then, as if wearing flip-flops and navel-exposing blouses weren’t brow-raising enough, when told that this is inappropriate work apparel, they apparently stare at their supervisors and ask, “Why?”
“These people are being written up for being habitually late, having a poor attitude and lacking basic workplace skills,” one HR professional says. “They are like, ‘What do you mean I have to work six months before I get a day off?’ There’s just resentment in the air.” (Like many HR professionals interviewed, she asked to have her name withheld.)
The situation is bad enough to have given birth to a cottage industry of books like Managing Generation Y, Motivating the “What’s in It for Me” Workforce and Getting Them to Give a Damn. In the latter, Eric Chester writes that members of this generation grew up spending little time with their parents but long hours in front of TV, computer and video game screens. “They have a skewed view of the way the world actually works, and come in with attitudes, tattoos and facial piercings, and expect their dream home right from the beginning.”
Study after study reports that, compared to previous generations, Gen Y is less willing to work long hours and more interested in pursuing outside work. Even the National Law Journal reported in March 2005 that a perceived lack of loyalty, initiative and energy was forcing managing partners to rethink their motivational strategies and their expectations.
The National Association of Colleges and Employers now offers workshops with such titles as “Gen Y: Gaining a Footing in the Workplace.” The summary cautions: “Experts predict that many organizations may be ill-prepared for this generational transition, and this lack of understanding may carry with it serious consequences such as rising absenteeism and high turnover.”
Or maybe crotchety co-workers should just heed the advice of their younger selves and take a chill pill?
Jackie Plunkett laughs when asked whether members of Gen Y (born between 1978 and 1999) are ready for the workforce. “It really runs the gamut,” she says, sobering. “There are individuals who have done internships, and they are very prepared, and there are others who haven’t given work much thought.”
Plunkett, the HR director at Maryville University, says she was told flat-out by one interviewee that he didn’t want to be doing the job offered but would take it to get his foot in the door—and he expected to move up quickly. “We typically don’t hire those people,” she adds.’
Jan Bryzeal directs HR for REJIS, a government data-processing center. “On a technical level, these graduates are ready for the workforce,” she says. “In other areas they aren’t quite as ready, like having a good work ethic, understanding appropriate office attire, handling responsibility and commitment.”
Skills taken for granted by other generations aren’t currently worked into orientation programs, but may have to be in the future. Companies are leaning hard on managers to address issues like business e-mail etiquette and why employees can’t spend work time on MySpace.
“I was thinking how they love to watch reality programs, like The Real World,” Bryzeal says. “There needs to be an Office Real World class. There would be tons of professionals who would love to talk to these kids about that.”
“Things have changed in the last 20 years,” says Denise Chachere, president of the Human Resource Management Association of Greater St. Louis, with a sigh. “We’re seeing some frustration on both ends. The expectations, perceptions, the way this generation approaches life is so different from the baby boomers.”
Chachere is an adjunct professor of human resources at Saint Louis and Washington Universities and runs her own consulting firm, Employee Assets.
“Something that contributes to the new attitude is the way young people have been treated during their pursuit of education,” she remarks. “They are looked at by the schools as a customer as opposed to a client.” A customer needs to be satisfied, whereas a client you can push. “We forget that we know better. We forget to make them work hard—and when we do, they manage quite well, but they complain about it all the way!”
One day Chachere brought prominent, respected recruiters to her class from a local institution. The starting pay they offered was considerably higher than the norm. After the pitch, Chachere asked who would be interested in working for the company. To her surprise, not a single hand was raised.
The company from which the recruiters came? That would be Steak n Shake—although the jobs were several rungs above “fries with that.”
Chachere says the trip from the classroom to the cubicle is a transitional challenge: “They will skip rules if they don’t think there is a good reason for them. Research shows that they will more readily challenge authority if they perceive that a rule doesn’t have a good purpose.”
Recent college graduates are skeptical about their own futures, too, after watching their parents’ employers merge, downsize and outsource. David Laslo, who directs the Metro Information Data Analysis Services at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, says younger workers “know they will go through several job changes,” forging their own career paths. They can no longer come to work for a company with the expectation that they will retire there—so their attitude is a little looser, more casual and less earnest.
What else shapes this generation? Their entertainment—reality shows in which nothing’s off limits—and the new obsession with celebrity. A multicultural, global world in which terrorism is a constant threat. Lives that have been scheduled—sometimes overscheduled—by hyper-involved parents. Commerce that catered to kids, from Baby Gap to Barbie-pink cellphones. Those phones have now become lifelines: Afloat in uncertainty, rapid change and constant technological contact, the youngest adults use mobile phones to anchor identity and relationship.
As for the rumored “sense of entitlement,” the culprit may be affluence itself. Although it’s the American dream that our children will grow up with more than we had ... we may have succeeded to excess.
“Maybe things have come easy for some people,” says Laslo, “and they can say, ‘I expect this, because this is where I am in society.’”
Katie Leonard grew up in Webster Groves and studied textile and apparel management at the University of Missouri–Columbia. During school she did “tons of interviews,” and whenever she was passed over for something, she would ask why. She eventually landed a job in retail design at Dillard’s, where she works long hours and some weekends but loves what she does.
She takes umbrage at the notion that her generation has a bad work ethic. “I absolutely do not think that is true. I think it’s the opposite—that our generation has one of the strongest work ethics. I got straight A’s and graduated with honors in college because I worked hard.”
She does admit to some adjustment issues: “I definitely had mixed emotions about leaving college and getting a job—I loved college. I loved my sorority and friends and professors. It was nice to know I’d be on my own financially for the first time, but I had to learn to watch what I say—it was eye-opening. You’re going to say silly things and embarrass yourself in front of your boss. I did multiple times!”
Another high achiever who feels lucky is Nikki Pudlowski. She grew up in South County and also went to Mizzou, graduating with a degree in marketing. She had many interviews and several offers but didn’t bite because they weren’t what she was looking for. She held out and is now an account executive for Swank Motion Pictures.
Pudlowski does feel that as a whole her generation has less of a work ethic. “When I look at my father and his generation, how they worked hard, went in when they were sick—that’s the role model. A lot of people today don’t have the drive and responsibility.” She only had to look to the next desk for an example: “Another girl was hired at Swank about the same time as me. She didn’t take her job seriously, would take vacation time at the last minute without approval. She didn’t last.”
In Pudlowski’s opinion, social class and upbringing—and a sense of entitlement—weaken the work ethic. “The girl I worked with was a ‘privileged’ person. Her parents were pretty wealthy, and she was handed a lot of things. That plays a part.”
Patrick Holleran, an associate at Holleran Duitsman Architects—a company his father cofounded—is 28, poised on the Generation X/Y border and able to see both sides of the issue. “The work ethic is different,” he says, “but only because the circumstances have changed. When my dad started out in his career, he did the 7 a.m.–to–6:30 p.m. thing. We work hard, but it’s a different type of hard.
“It seems like in school they build you up, and you get a top-of-the-line education, and you’re not prepared to start at the bottom,” Holleran adds. “It’s funny; people get out of school and you have to tell them, ‘This is a professional atmosphere—dress professionally, get back to people, return their calls.’” Another problem is getting employees to put in solid hours and not abuse the Internet. “It’s like liquor in your parents’ unlocked cabinet,” he says, laughing. “It just keeps disappearing! People pay bills, instant-message, surf.” Then there is text messaging, which he has less of a problem with: “I do it all the time. It allows you to get your point across without getting into a five-minute conversation.” He tells the story of text-messaging a boomer, who then called him back and said, “What the hell is this? Why didn’t you just call me?”
He grins. “My response was, ‘Good question. I don’t know.’”
Leigh-Anne Riebold grew up in O’Fallon, Ill., and graduated from Saint Louis University with a degree in business and marketing, after which she took a full-time position she didn’t really want, simply because it paid well.
She found the work challenging. “Showing up on time was very difficult for me!” she says with a laugh. “Being somewhere at 8 a.m. and actually having to sit and do specific things every day ... you feel like you’re just doing what people are telling you to do.”
Riebold quit the stable job for a riskier venture: starting a restaurant and bar, rBar, in the Grove, with other like-minded partners. Yes, she took a big pay cut. But now she handles the PR and marketing, and, though she’s in the restaurant only 30 to 35 hours a week, she’s working from home at 3 a.m., taking early-morning meetings, doing whatever’s required. “I never feel I stop working,” she says, “but since I enjoy it, I don’t mind.”
Marcia Masulla, another SLU grad, worked full-time throughout college, putting herself and her younger brother through school. “I think people in my generation have our eye on the prize, and we don’t want to go through the chain of command,” she says. “People I hang out with have more guts, have this entrepreneurial spirit. They are people who want to make a difference. It’s not the normal 9-to-5-ers.”
After graduating, she found herself quickly employed in the financial-services department of a local car dealership, but she wasn’t satisfied. A jump to Northwestern Mutual didn’t make her happier. She left it all at the age of 26 to open a women’s fashion boutique called Masulla on Washington Avenue. Why?
“I ask myself that every day!” she says, laughing again. “I was very secure—money was not an issue, I had a company car, health insurance ... but when I went to bed at night, there was something missing.”
This refrain is familiar to Sue Ekberg, a licensed professional counselor and the owner of Career Focus. In fact, it’s easier for her to generalize about Gen Y’s dreams than about its work ethic. “I see two groups,” she says. “One that is working really hard, has their nose to the grindstone—and the other that has had it too easy.” Those lost in the latter category often become her clients. And she has noticed that kids whose parents have taken care of their every need, who have little or no solid work experience and who have never participated in an internship or done volunteer work are at a particular disadvantage.
“I’ve had a young woman who was mad at her parents because her friends were given brand-new cars and she was given a three-year-old Honda Prelude,” she says. “Now, that one—I think she’s going to have trouble!”
Ekberg agrees that flexibility is more important than money with Y-ers, and she offers a historical perspective: We were once an agricultural society, she notes, and whether we got to the fields at 6 or 6:10 a.m. didn’t matter that much. Then came the Industrial Revolution, and the machines had to be fed at specific times. “Now things are shifting again,” Ekberg says. “Technology has made work more flexible.” Smart companies are realizing that it’s a two-way street and meeting their new hires halfway.
“In some ways we need a more humane workplace,” Ekberg says, “and we might be moving toward that. Look at Build-A-Bear—they allow you to bring your pets to work!”
To find a company that is adapting well to this generation, one need look no further than our own Enterprise Rent-A-Car. It’s the largest employer of new college graduates in the nation, with 200 dedicated recruiters spread out across the country.
Enterprise is big enough that employees can switch careers several times without ever leaving it. The company also always promotes from within—and the fact that 95 percent of senior management started at the bottom is likely encouraging to Y-ers, too.
“We have encountered a hardworking, goal-oriented generation,” says Marie Artim, assistant vice president for recruiting. “They are extremely technologically savvy, look for work that is personally enjoyable and have the ability to shift gears and make decisions on their own, but it’s about educating them for work. We let them know what the expectations are and why. Whenever you can, tie what they are doing to how it’s helping others. It’s not about authority. We need to understand what is important to them, because we realize this is our future workforce.”
Marriott International is also changing its approach for Gen Y, creating “edutainment” training podcasts that communicate in sound-bite bursts and can be downloaded to cellphones or iPods as needed.
In Connecting Generations, Claire Raines lists Gen Y liabilities as a distaste for menial work, lack of skills for dealing with difficult people, impatience, a lack of experience and perhaps a bit too much confidence. On the other side of the scale, their assets include their ability to multitask, their positive attitude and technical savvy, a strong goal orientation and a genius for collaboration.
Raines gives blunt advice about managing these workers: “Don’t expect them to pay their dues.” Let them work with friends, she urges; design office space so they’re set up physically to share ideas; allow a sense of fun in the workplace; be flexible. And consider a reverse mentoring program, because kids these days … have a lot to teach..
The Psychology of “These Kids Today ... ”
Complaints about a younger generation by the older generation might sound vaguely familiar ...
“Yes, it is very much a recurring theme, and it’s all generational,” says therapist Marilyn Wechter, a counselor who provides family-relationship guidance, teaches at Webster University and is a member of Psychotherapy Saint Louis. “The older generation likes to hold onto their power and is naturally critical of what is different.”
Wechter points to technology as one aspect that makes this generation more threatening: “I’m talking to you on this brand-new cellphone and trying to figure it out, when a kid could program it in a nanosecond.”
The key is for the elders to cede power more or less gracefully and recognize the need for psychological flexibility. Adapting to the new generation needn’t be a narcissistic blow. “It’s looking at things as different, as opposed to bad, recognizing that the way kids do something is not the way we would ever do it but not becoming archaic about it,” she says—before returning to “trying to figure out how to work this damn phone.”
