Canada’s workplaces should be prepared to provide meaningful work to its next generation of leaders, who could be eyeing high-level positions within a few years, generation Y researcher Carolin Rekar Munro says.
More so than previous generations, Canadians born between 1981 and 2000 are generally ambitious to take on leadership roles in organizations, the management professor at Victoria-based Royal Roads University says.
The cohort wants to be engaged in their work and won’t wait around for employers that can’t give them meaningful things to do, says Rekar Munro, who spent the last two years conducting a country-wide study of Gen Y’s attitude toward work.
“This is going to be a group that is very values driven,” she says. “We’re going to see a very strong focus on work learning and work balance.”
Where gen X – which she defines as born between 1965 and 1980 – put a strong emphasis on having free time to have a life, gen Y wants to add continued learning, but not necessarily to the benefit of their current employers, Rekar Munro says.
“It’s for their own personal development so that they have a strong sense of their skills so they’ve got mobility from job to job and career to career,” she says.
Rekar Munro says The Conference Board of Canada’s 2006 prediction of an accelerated retirement rate in 2012 would only be slightly affected by ailing retirement funds.
“We’re going to see 30 per cent of baby boomers reach 65, that’s 6.6 million Canadians,” she says. “By 2016 we’re going to be looking at a shortage of about one million workers.”
This means organizations are going to need the new younger workers, she says.
Research has generally shown gen Y to spend two to five years in one workplace, but Rekar Munro says they now consider one year a long-term commitment.
“There’s research that shows they can size up an organization within two to three weeks and have a pretty good idea if they want to stay any longer,” she says.
Shawn Peterson, 25, agrees his generation doesn’t want to waste much time in a job they don’t like.
“I’m really expecting to be at a company that gives out a lot of opportunities and will really go the extra mile to conform to the way I want to work and the things I want to do,” the Saint John resident says. “If they don’t do that I’m not too likely to wait around for that to happen.”
Though Peterson has been fortunate his employer, T4G Ltd., has continued to provide him with new experiences and challenges for the last five years, he has seen friends and other peers bounce around from job to job.
“I don’t think my generation would have as much loyalty as my parents’ generation would have,” he says.
“My parents would have been fine doing the same thing for say five years before moving up the chain. But we want more variety and we want to take things on early on.”
When engaged, Peterson says gen-Yers will want to stick around and work hard.
“If you are working on something that you personally can get behind or believe in you will go the extra mile regardless,” he says.
Rekar Munro says gen-Yers really want a boundary-less work environment and don’t want to be micromanaged, and most importantly they want an answer to the big question: Why is this important work to be done for the organization?
“We’re not doing a good job in organizations answering the ‘But why?’ question,” she says. “This is a group that really needs a high degree of feedback and immediate feedback.”
Gen-Yers are attracted to fast-track promotions and to some degree the money, but also perks such as flexible work hours and having fun, Rekar Munro says.
“Organizations need to create training and succession programs that attract gen Y,” she says. “If they can do that I think we’re going to be ahead of the game.”
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