Attracting Motivating And Retaining Generation Y Management Essay

Generation Y that closely referred to as millennial is latest member in the multigenerational workforce. In fact they are the newest and the last members of the workforce, born between 1982 and 2003. Although they grew up with technology and never knew a time without mobile phones and the internet, they have some values held by traditionalists like patriotic and willing to fight for freedom. They often think in bullet points and are ravenous researchers. Speed is important and they prefer rapid feedback. Moreover, they perform best when their abilities are identified and matched with challenging work.

These years companies in different countries faced different challenges such as attracting, managing and retaining the new population of workers. Members of Generation Y have an incredible amount of talent but they also have incredibly high expectations about their work environment, growth opportunities and rate of advancement. In other hand, financial crisis leads to downsizing in companies. In spite of the fact that there might be a near-term surplus of labor, the lack of existing skillful workers is obvious. It is vital to companies focused on new generation of Y workers and supplies their requirements; besides, this question came to mind that is should they just discharge the issues as just another generation gap that will eventually weaken away. Ignoring the generation Y is impossible because of big size of its population.

As a group, they are nearly as large as the baby boomers generation. As such, generation Y will make up an increasing part of your workforce. Generation Y has a lot to offer. They are confident, connected, optimistic and technical savvy. Generation Y would also be a growing part of your customer base and becoming increasingly influential factor that affects the buying process. We say that technology is becoming a critical factor for business success, on view of the fact that when these different workforces will work all together, the multi generational differences in attitudes, approaches, and styles related to work could create conflicts that in turn could considered as potential threats against reaching organizational goals. Besides, this situation will decrease or even destroy employee’s motivation, as we know motivation can be induced by the employer or reside within the employee and the key to motivating employees is remembering that not all employees are the same. In order to achieve motivation, managers must know each employee and must have a wide range of motivational techniques available, since each employee has a different set of values and personal experiences that brought them to where they are today. If management could come up with these actions, they could raise the organization towards its goals.

In addition, for most companies retaining talent and developing future leaders are organizational goals, hence to meet these goals, companies must understand the needs of today’s diverse workforces. Since failure to embrace these differences will result in not only having limited talent required for success, but also an employee population that is not engaged as they could be. Therefore, the level of engagement is critical to an organization’s overall activities. In this study, we have investigated about behavioral differences that could lead to diverse motivational levels, retention strategies in challenging labor shortage, and the effected of leadership to management style in that by knowing about these conditions, the organizations not only could prevent the failures that are more probable for them, but also could achieve their goals more rapidly. As such to be successful in managing generation Y, employers needs to know how to attract, retain and motivate these leaders of the future.

Literature Review

Generation Y has been deeply affected by several trends of the 1990s and 2000s: a renewed focus on children, family, scheduled and structured lives, multiculturalism, terrorism, heroism, patriotism, parent advocacy, and globalization. Coincidentally, Generation Y has been socialized with several core messages: be smart – you are special, leave no one behind, connected 24/7, achieve now, and serve your community (Martin, 2005). It likes to reject old-fashion media and advertising feeds. Playing video games, and watch DVDs are more interesting for them rather than TV programs. Those in Generation Y tend to live with their parents before college, plan to return to their parents’ home after college, and are less at home in the real world than in the virtual world – in which they spend more than six hours a day online. As a consumer, Generation Y is likely to be independent and not brand loyal. Conventional inside the home, it leans to be fashionable and sophisticated in the marketplace (Weiss, 2003).

Generation Y’s entrance in to the workplace would seem to present many opportunities in today’s ever-more competitive organizations in which high-performing workers are an asset, and demographic shifts point to impending labor shortages. Generation Y workers would seem to be a timely addition. According to the Southard and Lewis (2004) generation are mostly goal- oriented; besides, they tried to develop and improve themselves. They strongly believed on financial and personal success (Breaux, 2003). According to the Lewis (2003) Y generation feel that they would be disposed to force into a job that they evaluate it attracting and vital whilst their knowledge about this new job is too low.

Some of Generation Y’s characteristics may make it easier to manage than Gen X. Generation Y tends to value teamwork and fairness and is likely to be more positive than Gen X on a range of workplace issues including work-life balance, performance reviews, and availability of supervisor (What You Need to Know, 2003). Moreover, Generation Y descriptors include attributes predictive of high performance. Generation Y workers are inclined to he sociable, hopeful, talented, collaborative, inclusive, and civic-minded. Besides, Raines (2002) mentioned that in order to be skillful with high technically knowledge, they try to be open-minded, achievement-oriented, and able capable to be multi-tasking. Cautiously they are optimistic and enthusiastic about their future. Generation Y is likely to have a solid work ethic and entrepreneurial spirit. Based on the Pekala (2001) it leans to not only respect talent, especially traditionalists, but also strength, collaboration, energy, compliance, good quality, and responsibility.

Generation Y has a strong sense of company loyalty, is at least as satisfied with supervisors as are older workers, is as content as the others with the amount of praise received, and is as satisfied as the others with amount of vacation time and work flexibility or hours required. Additionally, Generation Y feels no more workplace stress than the other workers and is as satisfied as the others with retirement and health benefits (Saad, 2003).

At the same time, Generation Y’s entrance to the workforce seems to present some challenges. Although Generation Y workers tend to be more positive than Gen X about working in general, Generation Y tends to be less satisfied than Gen X with their jobs and employers. Present study tries to explain different dimensions of the dissatisfaction. Further, Generation Y is more open than Gen X to leaving for something better. Generation Y is likely to equate job satisfaction with a positive work climate, flexibility, and the opportunity to learn and grow more than any prior generation. Generation Y tends to have less respect for rank and more respect for ability and accomplishment. Cui et al. (2003) mentioned that Y generation like to trade more salary for job it thinks is significant at a firm where it experiences good feelings.

Generation Y tends to value respect and wants to earn it. Having freedom to execute is a significant behavior in Y generation (Dealing with Your New Generational Mix, 2004).

Additionally, Generation Y workers are likely to dislike menial work, lack skills for dealing with difficult people, and be impatient (Raines, 2002). Less than half of these young people form youngest generation like to introduce themselves as talent people who are ready to enter the work environments. The problem shoes itself when these young people technical talent are not fitted with communication skills, independent thoughts,and time managing (Pekala, 2001). In a survey by Mercer Human Resource Consultant (2002) it was disclosed that generation Y rating employers lower than other employees do on being treated fairly, getting necessary cooperation from others, and having opportunity to do interesting and meaningful work (The Next Generation, 2003).

Furthermore, employees in generation Y like to have immediate enjoyment rather than investing for a long time and effort (Southard and Lewis, 2004); consequently, they preferred to invest on some especial projects.

The Y generation employees like to be negotiators and questions in different events. Base Lewis (2003) cited that “The forty hour workweek doesn’t apply and ‘how’ meetings become “why’ meetings”. Tulgan as an Intergenerational management expert explained the problems that challenge Y generation based on the Breaux (2003) as below:

“Generation Y’ers is like X’ers on steroids. They are the most high-maintenance generation to ever enter the work force” (Breaux, 2003).

Discussion/ Issues

Scheduling to attract, manage, and retain the new employees generation is a considerable challenge toward the companies. But it’s a challenge that companies simply cannot afford to ignore. Generation Y is nearly as large as the baby boomer generation, and is expected to have nearly as big an impact on business and society. Generation Y are said to be un loyal, have poor communication, are impatient and has no respect for authority and they spend to much time on the internet instead on concentrating on the real work ( Sprague and Caroline, 2008)

Generation Y are already entering the workforce and their numbers will increase over time. The issues is the companies that don’t figure out how to harness this growing resource are likely to find themselves at a distinct disadvantage, not only in the talent market, but in the broader market as well. After all, Generation Y is not just the next generation of workers; they are also the next generation of consumers, and as such will ultimately determine whether future businesses succeed or fail. Here are some specific things companies can do today.

There are 3 main Generation Y issues and challenges faced by companies. They are:

3.1 Attracting

The most pressing challenges are how to attract the Generation Y. The tasks is daunting because this generation has different attitudes and expectations that the other generations. Companies are thinking hard and fast on attracting the new millennium workforce. Due to the fact that generation Y has seen a lot of job turbulence, recession in their lifetime and they have seen their parents loosing their jobs, generation Y are more interested in taking their own responsibility for their own employability by constantly improving and building on their own job skills. As such, they are more interested in organization that offers it employee’s professional development, continuing education and career coaching. Some other benefits cited as valuable by generation Y are extra vacation time, access to health club and social gathering tied to the workplace. Generation Y also looks at the opportunity of career mobility within the organization as an attracting factor. While the market for employees is a competitive one, paying high range of salary is not a excellent strategy to find new skillful people. Find out how you can present your companies to these new workers to attract and retain them.

Some companies are tackling the challenges of recruiting and retaining Generation Y using innovative strategies tailored to Generation Y characteristics. These methods which are contained supplying on site academic leadership, arranging official tutorial agenda to increase Y generation associability, and giving early chances to perform consequential job. To better reach Generation Y, some are streamlining the recruitment process and providing longer vacations after shorter service. As a same reason, some companies arrange inclusive intranet sites, for possibly conversion of unexploited managerial leave into cash, and letting conversion related to health into deferred reward accounts (Southard and Lewis, 2004).

Some companies are literally going where Generation Y workers are, connecting with them through the media and locations such as Internet cafes and video game stores. Or they recruit Generation Y through on-site career-day seminars in which ranking personnel share their own success stores. Some companies are using their Generation Y employees as the first out reachers to peer Generation Y candidates in an effort to quicken the pace of recruitment. In this way, the companies aim to both engage their Generation Y employees more fully and to create a workplace ally for the Generation Y candidate (Employing Generation Why, 2004).

3.2 Motivating

Based on the Herzberg definition, motivation is concluded from different definition such as the challenge of the works, with achievement, recognition, the work itself, responsibility, advancement, and growth. Dissatisfaction comes from the maintenance factors, which represent those lower-level needs that employees assume will be adequately met.

High level administrators with acceptable work conditions are the samples of these kinds of workers needs. Few managerial or professional people would say these job factors motivate them most. Yet, the minute a boss or working conditions becomes a principal concern, factors such as interesting job content and opportunity for advancement lose their power to motivate. As a conclusion, executing a job in its different aspects relies on the satisfaction of both motivation and maintenance needs.

Motivation level of a worker will affect by factors such as age, personal, outside environments, and the worker current life situation and career. For instance, “steady employment” and “good pay” often rank higher among all generations during times of economic uncertainty. When the economy is flourishing, employees tend to take these maintenance factors for granted; when unemployment and inflation are high, their principal motivators change.

On view of the fact that when these different workforces will work all together, the multi generational differences in attitudes, approaches, and styles related to work could create conflicts that in turn could considered as potential threats against reaching organizational goals. Besides, this situation will decrease or even destroy employee’s motivation, as we know motivation can be induced by the employer or reside within the employee and the key to motivating employees is remembering that not all employees are the same.

In order to achieve motivation, managers must know each employee and must have a wide range of motivational techniques available, since each employee has a different set of values and personal experiences that brought them to where they are today. If management could come up with these actions, they could raise the organization towards its goals. In addition, for most companies retaining talent and developing future leaders are organizational goals, hence to meet these goals, companies must understand the needs of today’s diverse workforces. Since failure to embrace these differences will result in not only having limited talent required for success, but also an employee population that is not engaged as they could be.

Work life balance can be offered in the form of flex time that would allow employees to work over one day, and work less hours on the next day. Employee growth and development could be management training programs that allow employees to advance their careers. Employee wellness programs would allow employees to stay physically fit, and the organization could have training programs to promote safe work habits. Employees need to be recognized for their work, and management could be trained to offer more praise to employees for tasks completed correctly. Organizations can make employees feel more involved simply by holding meetings where they have a voice for their ideas, and concerns from the employees can be heard by management. By utilizing these practices an organization could expect the organizational improvements, employee well being, and retaining the elusive Generation Y worker.

3.3 Retention

Retention means that an employee work with the company until the end of their contract date and it is useful for both employee and company. If they find unfair situation in their job condition, they will explore a better opportunity and they will shift to the new job. Consequently one of the important duty of company manager is to find the best employee and try to keep them and prepare acceptable work condition for them.

Pay the salary and extra rewards are not a way to bring satisfy to them. Compared to baby boomers and other generations in the workforce, Generation Y tend to be more concerned about meaningful work and relationships with coworkers, attitudes that are the key for employers to remember in retention efforts. Generation Y are hardly the first to long for a job that offers more than a paycheck and a way to fill their days. They are a socially conscious generation. Participating in charity work and green activites which help the environment improvement is a dream for Y generation. Sustainability and green are the hot words today. Generation Y are very interested in social and environmental happenings through the media as well as their employer. It can be as simple as spending a day rebuilding or renovating a house for somebody in the community, planning ways to make your office green, having local nonprofit come in to discuss volunteer or donation opportunities. With getting everybody involved by creating the emotional equity, making it a bit difficult for them to leave the firm.

Recommendation

The following has seen to be the strategies in attracting, motivating and retaining the generation Y into the work-force:

Flexibility – This can be seen in creating learning opportunities, sponsored learning capabilities, long range career planning, promote employee mobility within organization and cross country training opportunities.

Work Life Balance – This is a social aspect where flexible working schedules are design, developing a formal or informal networking circle for career development, hosting social or charitable events that is tied up to work. The work life balance initiatives were aspects such as paid leave to care for dependents, flextime, study assistance, eldercare, and time off to attend non work events, job sharing, telecommuting, on-site healthcare, and various other things the Generation Y workers are wanting in a career.

Access to Technology -This strategy is linked to the organization adaptation of new technology in increasing work productivity. This is looked at where the workforce are equipped with state of the art laptops, access to internet, i-phones, PDA, video conferencing, e-learning and many more. This group of people would not live without cable television and access to mobile phones. With the focus on technology, flexible work schedules and spaces are also crucial to Generation Y. Offering the employees the benefit of arriving at work an hour early or later gives them the flexibility to schedule life issues such as daycare, eldercare or doctor appointment.

Sense of purpose and meaning to the job -This stress on core values, rich corporate culture, sense of achievement and contribution to the achievement of organization goals. The generation Y also looks at branding. The organization brand plays a pivotal role in attracting the generation Y to join and contribute with the sense of belonging.

Good Management

i.) Management style

Flat line management is top choice lately and for a lot of good reasons. Generation Y tend to be a bit self-centered. They will not stay in their job if they feel unsatisfied and there is no challenge role in their job. Generation Y particular were encouraged to find “the perfect fit” in their selection of everything from childhood activities to a college and they now seek a similar sense of place in their job.

ii.) Mentoring and Feedback

Generation Y has grown up hyper scheduled. Generation Y has been coached and tutored and guided and over-parented at every step of the way in their short lives so far. They thrive on one-on-one, personalized attention. Creating an environment that solicits input from employees demonstrates to them that their opinions are valued, ergo, they are valued. In return, they feel more valued and loyal to the company.

Compensation-Fair compensation is still important to the employees. Organizations must offer an appealing compensations package include tangible rewards such as pay (base salary, stock etc) and benefits (i.e. health care, paid vacation etc) and intangible rewards such as learning and development and a satisfying working environment. Even though base salary and benefits constitutes hygiene factors for Generation Y, other parts of the compensation package will work as motivators. As the title and salary are no longer the number one priorities, Generation Y are more interested in self-fulfillment and work-life balance.

5.0 Conclusion

The workforce deficit that is proposed to occur in 2014 is expected to be remedied by the generation Y workforce. However, problems with retention in employment with this group have been widespread across America. There is no set procedure to be implemented in order to retain this workforce; however the proposed model does encompass the problems associated with retaining these people. The model lays the foundation for organization specific procedures to be written from, and according to past experiences and research these methods should greatly reduce turnover in this group. Further research should be conducted to measure the effectiveness of these factors in employee retention of people who are categorized into generation Y.

6.0 Limitation

Although recognizing and considering the different attitudes and needs of four types of generation could help the management for achieving the organizational goals, some limitation could be realized in this situation in that some researchers have found before too.

As a case in point a new model of human resource solutions for achieving intergenerational interaction in organization that adopted from theories of Park (1950) and Kubler-Ross (1969) could be considered.

Most of the researchers have divided the human resources into four different generation types and in turn they have detected and allocated some characteristics for each generation. It could not be considered these specifications would be the same for all the human beings in all the societies and task environment absolutely. Moreover, the combinations of different generation within the work environments or even societies are different from each other. Therefore, the outcome of studying in different situations could be somewhat different from each other.

The generation groups who differ from the conventional culture usually cannot participate in defining the rules and standards used to make meaning. Hence, coordinating of these different group workers in such a task environment is often very controversial.

The group that would be dominant among the other task groups in the work area usually spread their own beliefs and attitudes as if its views and approaches are universal and accepted by all other groups and members.

Assimilation among these groups promotes self-alienation by engendering self-denigration where individuals differ from the neutral accepted norm. In addition it could provide the condition for covering or even demolishing individual beliefs and customs.