So let’s start at the beginning. Why is Generation Y a commercial issue for PR agencies and a career issue for an increasing number of the people who work for them?
What is it?
But before we do, what the hell is Generation Y? Many will recognise it at the one that came after Generation X. Yet definitions vary widely. It was first referenced in 1993 apparently, but then referred to people born after 1974. For me, that’s not Gen Y. If you were born in the mid 70s the first music you bought was probably still on vinyl, you didn’t eat anything microwaved until you went to secondary school and you remember your legs sticking to vinyl car seats on hot days.
So I’ve come up with my own definition of Gen Y, for the purpose of this blog. If you have ever made arrangements to meet someone in a pub without the benefit of either of you having a mobile phone (so once you made those arrangements, you had to stick to them because new information couldn’t exchanged while in transit) then you are NOT Gen Y. I still remember calling friends on home landline phones on a Thursday to arrange which pub to meet in on a Friday evening: time, pub, area of the pub. If you were 10 minutes late, you risked everyone having moved on. Text was a noun, not a verb. But we digress.
This marks Gen Y out as being (with a little leeway on the licensing laws) born after 1983, assuming mobile ubiquity by about 2001.
How Generation Y compares
For me, it comes down to this: from all the conversations I’ve had about this, Gen Yers have different motivations to other generations. This Guardian article from a couple of years ago is a good précis. Above all, the ability to earn more money seems to matter less: work/life balance and the ability to make personal choices matters more than the fury of building a successful career.
Without giving too much of a history lesson, let’s look a few of the generational observations I’ve been given about this:
- The generation who fought in the Second World War: valued freedom most, and money far less. Then the baby boomer children came, and the older generation frowned upon their frivolity, questioning why their generation had fought and died for freedoms that were being p*ssed up the wall at a Friday dance
- The baby boomers: new money, new freedoms, new innovations and labour-saving devices, new entertainment, new (any) drugs. You might envy this generation, but without them we wouldn’t have had the progress we’ve had since the 60s. This generation may have bought homes in the 70s and now be sitting (often) on properties that have benefited from a rocketing market. Which is all good for them, but subsequent generations have had more of a battle
- And next came Generation X. Technological progress means we started out on black and white TVs, and digital watches were awe-inspiring when launched. Our parents ‘had it easier’ than their parents. Yet Generation X also joined the workforce either during the frenzied capitalism of the 80s or (like me) in the 90s, when we progressed from a tough recession to the early days of the internet to rapid growth and the dot.com boom. And often, we didn’t have our parents to fall back on, at least not much. Career hunger, particularly in formative years, was paramount. The question was not whether you’d arrive at the office before you had to, it was whether you’d arrive before the cleaners had left. Seventy-hour weeks were normal. Everything was about fighting your way up. Getting on the property ladder. Pushing for the next promotion
- So to Generation Y. For me, there are several important factors about previous generations that have shaped this one. Property: buying even a small flat these days is incredibly difficult, and many people seem to feel it’s either beyond them or too much of a burden. Careers: you probably (assuming some higher education) came into the workplace from 2004 onwards; after an economic wobble, things were on the up, with employers fighting over you – travel for a while, get a job, change jobs, whatever. Motivation: yes you’re ambitious, but if there are lots of opportunities then you can move jobs and get ahead faster somewhere else. Parents: well they’re probably sitting on a reasonable nest egg so if things go wrong you can always go back to them
Why Generation Y is an issue
First, a bold statement: other generations might bemoan Gen Yers in the workplace, but they should first take a long hard look at themselves. Gen Xers may see themselves as being more motivated to progress their careers and get frustrated with those that don’t, but equally the world of work has changed markedly from the 80s and 90s. I wasn’t working at the time, but I suspect that the raw capitalists of the mid 1980s were sneered at by an older generation that had grown up valuing freedom and had the Three Day Week lingering in the memory.
But this does all help to illustrate why Generation Y can cause tension in PR agencies these days. People who worked at agencies in the 80s and 90s, who have worked through a couple of (albeit fairly moderate) boom and bust cycles and who remember what it was like to try for a year to get the right job generally put up with Gen Y between 2004 and 2009 – they needed the staff. And then when the credit crunch hit and cutbacks began, they wondered why Gen Y was (as they saw it) less willing to graft and fight. Today, they’re wondering why Gen Y is, given the faint whiff of optimism in the industry, starting to demand many of the sops and opportunities that were afforded to them during the boom years of the second half of the last decade.
It’s probably time for a list to help make this all a little clearer. Ten things Gen X PR people have said to me in the past 12 months about their frustrations with Gen Y:
1. They keep asking about what their career here holds for them; they should realise it’s them and the effort they’re putting in that’s the problem
2. They just don’t understand how tough it is and that they’re lucky to have a job
3. They keep talking about how they feel, but they don’t seem willing to do anything about it
4. Why don’t they have a career plan? I’ve always had a career plan
5. Why do they just seem content to work 9 to 5.30?
6. I struggle with managing a team in which some people are ambitious and the others might say they are but don’t have the work ethic
7. I spent way too much time mollycoddling people and should just tell them how it is
8. They’re always looking for the employers to do more for them yet they don’t do more for employers
9. Doesn’t he own a f&cking tie?
10. Why won’t people simply do what they’re told?
Some bitterness then, some frustration, and a lot of lack of understanding. But if you had gone through such tumultuous economic change, felt the property ladder was greased against you and felt that no amount of effort you made might make a difference, perhaps you’d be more sympathetic.
Or perhaps not.
This is the first of a five-part series, so is not the full picture. Not by any means. So you may have issues with the scene that’s been set above. Which is good: send me feedback please, ideally with a comment below. I have probably missed things, so fill in the gaps.
I should declare my own circumstances here: I am 36, started my career in 1992 (after several years of toiling in supermarkets and on paper rounds), bought my first property in 1997 and have divorced parents still paying off their mortgages.
Tune in for more tomorrow.
Part one: Generation Y – why? http://goo.gl/fb/qCXU (@mynameisearl)
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Blog series part one: Generation Y – why? http://bit.ly/9bxc2N. All comments very welcome.
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I’m not sure whether I agree with your analysis of the macroeconomic conditions of Generation Y (if such a thing exists). What you’re assuming here – and which X-ers still cling to – is the idea of a working life with a natural ending. The inference that if you slog your guts out for 40 years you are rewarded with a nice pension.
There’s no such promise for Generation Y. They’re all going to be worked until they drop – the pension pots are empty, houses are expensive, and taxes will only get higher as the working population of baby boomers and X-ers shrinks. Probably no wonder they demand better conditions – work is the only thing they can look forward to.
I think, like you say, that it is largely a lack of understanding. It’s amazing how little a degree means now, even from the best universities. And as for not slogging it out – the amount of unpaid internships and work experience you need behind you to even get on the bottom rung can be really tough.
As someone whose parents could afford to support her whilst she spent summers in London making tea, I felt rather privileged – and god did I feel grateful when off the back of these placements, and mid recession, I got my job in PR.
When I talk to my peers I think it’s more a question of anxiety that we should be motivated, certainly not that we don’t have a career plan. That we should try as many things as possible, keep pushing for promotions, work for the best agencies. We feel the pressure to have it all and achieve it all, as soon as possible. And I think sometimes we need to step back from this and have Generation X put things in perspective.
That said, I don’t know anyone in PR who thinks working hours of 9 – 5.30pm exists.
Fantastic blog on preconceptions of Generation Y by @mynameisearl and my thoughts beneath http://bit.ly/dCIANS
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Excellent first part of @mynameisearl’s Gen Y in PR series: http://ow.ly/1fAXs
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Interesting analysis, and looking forward to the rest of the series. I myself find it hard to categorise whether I’m Gen X or Gen Y. I’m 37, remember my legs sticking to vinyl car seats, the days pre-mobile and when email and the internet went mainstream. And yet my motivations are much more Gen Y than the money and career-focused Gen X I grew up in. Which hasn’t always gone down that well with peers and bosses!
I see it all the time where firm Gen X bosses in PR agencies are being driven mad by the supposed lack of ‘pace’ of account execs and managers. And yet what they’re not seeing is the simple fact that Gen Yers work in a different way. As you rightly say, it’s a lack of understanding. The world has changed – people aren’t lazy now, they’re simply living in a different cultural environment, and the Gen Xers who get the most from them talk their language. For want of a far better phrase that doesn’t conjour up an image of a geography teacher (and one that really does prove that I’m Gen X!), they’re down with the kids!
Interesting blog, Steve, but it’s missing an important part of the equation: Generation Jones (between the Boomers and Generation X). Particularly since most GenYers are the offspring of GenJones parents, this is important re. your blog post.
Google Generation Jones, and you’ll see it’s gotten lots of media attention, and many top commentators from many top publications and networks (Washington Post, Time magazine, NBC, Newsweek, ABC, etc.) now specifically use this term. In fact, the Associated Press’ annual Trend Report chose the Rise of Generation Jones as the #1 trend of 2009. I found this page helpful because it gives a pretty good overview of recent media interest in GenJones: http://generationjones.com/2009latest.html
It is important to distinguish between the post-WWII demographic boom in births vs. the cultural generations born during that era. Generations are a function of the common formative experiences of its members, not the fertility rates of its parents. And most analysts now see generations as getting shorter (usually 10-15 years now), partly because of the acceleration of culture. Many experts now believe it breaks down more or less this way:
DEMOGRAPHIC boom in babies: 1946-1964
Baby Boom GENERATION: 1942-1953
Generation Jones: 1954-1965
Generation X: 1966-1978
Generation Y/Millennials: 1979-1993
Thanks all.
Chris – agreed about clinging to the view of work life having a natural ending. To be honest I think that drives many Gen Xers: knowing there is no job for life, while Gen Yers seem pretty comfortable with that (or resigned to it). And agreed that pensions are not what they used to be, not in the slightest. There was an interesting if unnecessarily inflammatory debate on Newsnight last week about whether boomers should pay more for their longer lives. It really highlighted the lack of understanding that exists between generations. Every time I hear a more mature person saying they can’t understand how the young today could ever afford a house, if makes me want to tell them to make more of an effort to understand rather than just wittering on about it.
Paul – interesting that you say agency bosses are driven mad by what they see as lack of pace. I think you’re right, the tension can be almost visible. It’s the output that matters. And I too have increasingly Y-like motivations. The ironic thing is that 10 or 15 years ago Gen Xers were getting in at 7.30am and staying late just so the bosses saw them doing so. They may not have been any more productive that anyone doing regular hours, it was just a b*llshit approach to career progression. Technology helps, or can help, to give much better work/life balance these days without the former silliness.
Down with the kids? Partly, but also that they’re not wedded to their past ideologies and are willing to accept change. Because if you’re not willing to change, it might be time to change job.
Chuffed: part one of blog series and already Google indexed fifth for ‘Generation Y PR’. At least t’kids are reading. http://ow.ly/1fAXs.
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[...] Actually that’s not strictly true. Some of the senior people running agencies or teams are griping about it, but I don’t know of any who’ve confronted the issue. [...]
Thanks for the input on Generation Jones. Right, I had completely missed that. It’s not something I hear about often to be honest.
But what’s your point ref PR agencies and how they’re managed/people are developed though?
Is it that this generation has centre stage at a senior management level but doesn’t understand other generations?
And I absolutely agree about pace of change making generational windows shorter. Is Gen Y actually several generational periods, depending (perhaps, he said not particularly seriously) on the functionality of your first mobile phone?
Good finale to series of 5 posts by @mynameisearl http://bit.ly/9Jdc47. Worth starting from Part 1 if you missed it http://bit.ly/dCIANS
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
[...] definition, the generation includes anyone born after 1983 – and all the accusations above were made by Gen X bosses about their Gen Y [...]