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2.
Because Generation Y has the narrow perspective that is the inevitable
outcome of their lack of experience, you should know that they tend to
have very black-and-white views about honesty and integrity. Don't say
things you don't mean.
Now days, Generation Y seems to
interview prospective employers, rather than the other way around.
They want to know what we stand for - they want to know what our values
are - they want to know that they have the capacity to make a
difference if they consent to work for us.
And perhaps because
we're so astonished to find ourselves in this predicament, we tend to
tell them what we think they want to hear. It's a mistake. Far better
to be truthful.
If you expect them to work 24/7 until a deal
goes down - tell them that - but if you won't let them have time off to
compensate then be honest with them - if you tell them they can save
gay whales in their spare time, secure in the knowledge that they'll
never have any spare time, be assured that not only will they leave,
they'll tell all their friends that you're not to be trusted.
3.
Attitudes to work/life balance are led from the top. If leaders don't
demonstrate respect for their own families by going home early,
regularly, they have no hope of persuading anyone that they really care
about family friendly work practices.
And the failure to
live out these values has real consequences, particularly with young
parents of both sexes, who quickly absorb the message that whatever the
organizations rhetoric about the importance of families, working family
friendly hours is bad for your career.
For Generation X, in
the crucial baby-raising years, family friendly policies and procedures
aren't worth the proverbial fizzy drink if the behavior of partners and
department heads leads parents to believe that their career is in
jeopardy if they try to take advantage of family friendly work policies.
I
suspect that part of this issue is generational. Younger parents are
more likely to both be working, and to have a far more democratic way
of sharing household tasks, like being home in time to bathe and feed
children.
Older fathers often have stay-at-home wives, and
relish the capacity to stay at work until children are bathed and fed,
and their wife has had sufficient time to slip into a dry martini. The
system is currently skewed entirely towards the latter, and not at all
to the former - a better balance would be fairer to all concerned.
Perhaps
a wise leader might consider offering time management courses to anyone
regularly working after 7.00PM at night - it would be a very useful
signal of a genuine change in culture if we stopped talking approvingly
of long hours as a sign of commitment, and treated them rather as
demonstrating a lack of competence in completing tasks in a timely
fashion.
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