So What?

So that's my generation. We're just as motivated and eager as the Baby Boomers. We're ambitious, even though few of us have any specific career goals. But we also have fundamentally different attitudes towards work.

We don't see work as the only important thing in life. We see the idea of working nine to five in an office as outmoded. The traditional concept of working for one company until we retire seems just as antiquated. We place greater emphasis on enjoying ourselves at work. We like to be challenged and we like to feel the satisfaction of a job well done. It's what keeps us showing up.

Perhaps our views will change as we mature. Or perhaps they are views that will remain with us and influence our decisions when we take our turn as the generation at the top of the corporate ladder.

Sidebar: The Y's and Wherefores of Retention

Successful strategies for managing tech-savvy Gen Y employees

Many employers remain in the dark about the best ways to motivate and retain Gen Y employees but help is on the way.

US-based consulting firm the Concours Institute has begun a research project — named Project YE — into the best way to recruit and retain Gen Y staff. Concours has also written a book that addresses the topic, entitled Workforce Crisis. Concours president Tamara Erickson says employers can appeal to Gen Y's desire for flexibility by developing "project-based work opportunities. Many Y's would prefer to work on an episodic basis. We call it 'cyclic work'," she says.

Erickson also has some suggestions for managing this generation's desire to move on — she suggests they be given their wish. "Move people laterally, and with greater frequency than in past models," she says. "Y's like variety and it promotes learning."

She also stresses the importance of keeping Gen Y challenged. Any position offered to Gen Y staff should "offer significant learning opportunities", and employers would do well to "promote these heavily as part of the recruiting process".

According to Concours, another challenge associated with working with Gen Y staff is that they are often assisted by what the institute calls "helicopter parents". These parents are constantly hovering around their children and are always on hand to offer career advice from a more experienced perspective.

Erickson recommends that employers should strive to incorporate these parents into the recruitment process. "You can't fight them, so make them part of your process," she says. "Anticipate their questions and make sure your offer letters outline the types of things they will be interested in (benefits, learning). Some companies are even directing their recruiting toward the parents: 'Why we would be a great company for your child to choose'."

An editorial from consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton's strategy+business magazine concentrates on the inevitable gap in technological savvy between Gen Y employees and their Baby Boomer bosses. "Smart managers would do well to pay attention to what this technologically savvy generation has to offer," Booz Allen Hamilton says. "If consulted, these young employees can be an enormous force for positive change and success in their companies. If ignored, they will doubtless spend their brain cycles on the job plotting how to make their own work lives, not their companies, better."