Email Us

Understanding Gen Y

A Cross Cultural Experience
We are suggesting to our clients that we are working with to see working with Gen Y as a cross-cultural experience. When interacting across cultures we know that we will experience different cultural values, norms and language. Learning the art of managing Gen Y employees is a similar process. It is about understanding their culture and how you can bridge the trans-generational cultural differences to develop effective employees and to create high performing teams.

If you are facing generational issues now, we can guarantee that they will get worse before they get better. Gen Y employees are just now entering the workplace. As their numbers grow the challenges to recruit, manage and retain them will grow larger as companies and managers learn the skills to effectively manage this generation. Depending upon how proactive a company is, it will take 5-10 years before they have become fluent in the cultural style of Gen Y employees.

The Business Case for Gen Y

Important Skills: In our increasingly high tech world, this generation brings a wealth of skills to the workplace. Technology is not just a tool for them, it is a way of life. Using this instead of battling against it adds a powerful tool to your company's skill set which can help with innovation, productivity and efficiency.

A Different Viewpoint: This generation has been taught to question everything. In fact, some people call this the "why generation". While this can be seen as threatening to some companies and managers, for others it is an opportunity to see their business, processes, clients and products from a completely new perspective. These insights can be used to help streamline, communicate better and develop products closely tailored to the needs of your clients.

Reflective of Consumers: If you are going to sell to this generation, you will need people on your staff who see the world in the same way as your future consumers. Putting them on your staff and engaging their creativity can yield to higher consumer satisfaction and greater sales.

Seeking a Solution

Some companies are seeking solutions to managing Gen Y employees out of pragmatism. They want to address current issues and they know that this is their future workforce. Other companies are excited about the skills and attributes that this particular generation brings to the workplace. In both cases, the Managing Gen Y can help as an important tool in both understanding Gen Y employees and in creating a work environment that leverages their unique skill sets.

How Goes Managing Gen Y Help?
Managing Gen Y is a powerful combination of education about Gen Y and implementation tools. Consider it a self-guided cultural tour to the Gen Y culture. We have distilled the content down into core principals that managers need to know in eight areas (Recruiting, Communication, Teamwork, Workstyles, Motivating, Coaching, Feedback and Retention), provided do's and don'ts for each topic and also implementation tools that make it easier to put their knowledge to use.