What To Do When Generations Clash

I’ve just returned from the EO President’s Meeting in Dallas, TX and one of the biggest topics that they were discussing was the significance of delivering value to members.  The major reason why value is so important: retention of members.  Like most organizations and companies, acquiring a new member (or customer) is very expensive and time-consuming.  It seems obvious that, once you’ve acquired them, retaining members should be a heavy area of focus for any leadership team.  As the discussion continued it began to shift to the age of our members and the risks/rewards of eliminating the ceiling that is currently placed on new members.

I found myself sitting in this large conference room with 100+ other business leaders reflecting on the amount of preparation and time that had gone into evaluating this topic.  The most amazing thought I had was that the collective revenues of these 100+ businesses represents the GDP of a fairly significant nation and this was the most important thing on their minds.

When EO was started just over 20 years ago, it was created for Entrepreneurs who were under the age of 40.  When I joined EO 5 years ago it was called the Young Entrepreneurs’ Organization (YEO).  At the time, the average age of a member was about 37.  Today, the age limit of 40 has been eliminated and the average age of a member is now 41.  To put it in a more simple perspective: every year that I’ve been part of this organization, the average age has gone up by 1 year.  This is quite indicative of our entire population as well as a major challenge for businesses around the US.

Something we’ve been looking at a lot here at Hire Better is directly related to this particular topic.  The area of focus for us: as businesses continue to grow and mature, they’re worried about the retention of their employees as well as the age of their teams.  Jason Dorsey, widely known by the business word as the GenY Guy, has some incredible data points that he’s been publicizing to business leaders around the world.  Here are a few:

• For the first time ever we have FOUR generations working together in the same workplace (GenY, GenX, Baby Boomers and “the Mature” Generation)
• The average life expectancy of a Baby Boomer is about 78 while the “retirement age” is still 65
• GenY’ers are the first generation in history that will likely need to WORK for 65 years (that’s retirement at 87-90 years old)

On top of these points, here are a couple of other really scary ones (if you’re a business leader)

• While Baby Boomers are finally comfortable with email and are actively learning about Facebook, GenY’ers aren’t using those mediums much any more because they’re cumbersome and/or they’re no longer “cool” now that their parents are part of the community
• GenY’ers believe that long term tenure in a role is 13 months.  Baby Boomers want to give them employee reviews once a year.
• GenY’ers aren’t really motivated by money as a “carrot” the way most previous generations have been.  Why?  Because their parents (those same Boomers) have given them a credit card to pay for things like gas, groceries, vacations, etc.

Driving retention, loyalty and performance from the GenY population is becoming a real challenge for businesses around the US.  This is a generation that is affordable and hard-working as well as passionate about their work but they can’t be relied on to work diligently from 8 AM to 6 PM every day.  They aren’t interested in sitting in meetings to talk about the next meeting.  And they’re no longer even “tech savvy” (Jason calls them “tech dependent” because they don’t have any idea how their smart phone works – they just know they can’t live without it).

What in the world are you supposed to do as a business when you wake up and realize that the future of your organization depends on leveraging this new population of workers that you can’t relate to?  Here are a couple of quick suggestions:

• Accept that while Work/Life Balance is something that Baby Boomers dream about and GenX’ers talk about, GenY lives it.  You won’t be able to keep them around if you expect them to sacrifice their friendships and social time.  Create a workplace that inspires them and encourages hard work in short spurts and then downtime to go “be a kid”.
• Let them work in teams as often as possible.  This is a generation that was raised playing soccer, baseball and other team sports starting at age 3.  They were on tournament teams starting at age 8.  When then went to these tournaments, even if they finished in 8th place they all got trophies.  If you’re asking them to work solo and independently without praise, they’re not going to stay engaged.
• Start with the outcome and then work backwards to to talk about the steps.  This is counter-intuitive to the way most people are used to teaching and also to how our educational system has educated every generation for the last 5 generations.  By starting with the big picture and driving universal awareness of the challenges, GenY will embrace the challenge and buy-in to the goals instead of zoning out at step 4 of a 200 step process.
• Give employee reviews all the time – 10 minute check-ins every week or two are significantly more powerful than an annual review.  Let this new generation know what they are doing right, give them praise, offer corrective actions and make minor adjustments all the time instead of hoping they’ll be around for their 1st annual review.

Jason Dorsey just released a new book and you owe it to yourself to buy it and read it.  You can also read a lot more about him on his website.

Tags: Entrepreneurs, EO, gen Y, generation Y, geny, hire better, jason dorsey, Retention, Scorecard, talent acquisition