The Hindu Business Line : We love to hate our young employees

There is a growing divide between the values, needs and expectations of the young and old employees; the former are thought to have no values, reckless and greedy. The blame is, however, unjustified.

A rolling stone gathers no moss. This proverb has an original and a modern version! The original interpretation saw the growth of moss as desirable and suggested that those who moved did not develop anchors or roots and did not also pick up any responsibilities.

The current interpretation of the proverb sees moss as undesirable baggage and stones without moss are seen a clean and dry. By this logic, people who move are seen to be smooth, shining and not necessarily undesirable.

The difference in these two interpretations best describes the growing divide between the values, needs and expectations of young and old employees and, as a corollary, why many "elders" in today's organisations "love to hate young employees". (We may define young employees as those with less than six years of working experience.) They will tell you how today's young employees have no values, are reckless and greedy. In their frustration at not being able to handle them, they will even confess that only a recession and some hard times will teach them a lesson. While there are clear differences in their values and beliefs, I believe that the blame is unjustified. If at all, the blame is the older employees'.

The big shifts

There are several big shifts that have contributed to young employees behaving the way they do.

Older employees grew up in the era of shortages while young employees have entered a world of choices and options — be it food, television, clothes, education, bikes, retail stores, information or even jobs. There is just so much to choose from. Shortages force you to be contented but choices make you demanding.

Greater levels of governance and the power of technology has given young employees unprecedented access to information and also fuelled their appetite for the highest levels of transparency. They have no qualms placing their CVs on the web, giving candid feedback on employee surveys or "saying it as it is" in a 360 degree survey.

Economic exigencies have led organisations to make their employee value proposition a lot more market-oriented and a lot less paternalistic.

The speed of growth in the size of many Indian organisations (in terms of headcount) is unfortunately resulting in greater alienation and fragmentation of work. In fact, young employees see HR as a process and a mail ID and not as a person.

New drivers, new values

These shifts have resulted in young employees upholding values that many find difficult to comprehend or accept.

Young employees view career planning as a sequence of small steps and not as one big journey. Remember, we told them that the new mantra is employability.

Young employees see no harm in frequent job changes. They are merely exercising their choice. Even their parents encourage them to do so, having seen no large gain from their own "misplaced loyalty".

They see education as an investment and money as the greatest driver. Remember, we are the ones who converted the educational institutions into "staffing machines".

They value width and not depth. That's because we are the ones who decided to measure their performance and not skills from the first day.

They learn from peers and from the Internet and not from their managers. But we are the ones who have made the manager's role so task oriented and impossible for him to be with his people.

He is unemotional and detached in his relationship with the organisation. But we are the ones who made everything electronic.

The bottomline is that the current behaviours of our young employees are a result of our own actions and inactions. We get what we deserve.

Five bold steps

With all of our lives dependent on the productivity, enthusiasm and well-being of young employees, it is so important that we make the effort to understand and accept young employees and engage with them very differently. I would like to suggest five bold steps to make this happen:

A sociological perspective: Wearing our narrow organisational blinkers will not help us get any closer to our young employees. A much deeper exploration of the sociological changes is urgently called for. Large organisations will do well to invest in this inquiry for the larger social good.

Big picture: Even as we are in a tearing hurry to scale newer heights and build bigger organisations, we need to take a few moments to also carry our young employees along. If they see the big picture just the way we do, they are likely to share our excitement.

Challenge them: Innumerable studies have pointed out that employees value the work they do over the money they earn. It is the selfishness of organisations that has led them to put money ahead of the job. How else would you explain the mindless sums paid to summer trainees recently? We need to challenge them and raise the bar.

Transparency: Our struggle with making the performance management system work is a reflection of our challenge with transparency. Today's young employees will not live with the contradictions and conflicts that yesterday's managers lived with. They need information, inclusion and instant feedback.

Adult relationship: In our anxiety to please and appease, we end up treating our young employees like kids. When they want fun at work, we think of picnics. When they want to bond, we buy them beer. When they want to communicate, we give them a lecture. Let's grow up and learn to treat them like adults. In the new world, a rolling stone gathering no moss is still considered good. You can watch it roll away or just pick it up in your hand. The choice is yours!

(The author is founder and CEO of totus consulting, a strategic consulting firm that designs and implements HR systems and processes for organisations across diverse industries. He can be reached at ganesh@totusconsulting.com)

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