How would I know?

I’m Gen Xer. First record was a 7ins vinyl by The Wombles. Waited excitedly all week for The A Team on ITV so I could talk about it in the playground on Monday morning. First car was a battered Ford Capri. Still occasionally refer to portable music players as Walkmans.

How would I know what Generation Y really thinks about PR, the opportunities agencies offer these days, their career paths, their motivations and what they think the future holds?

I don’t. But I am trying to understand, and I’ve been taking the time to hear from as many of them as possible.

I would love to get comments on this from Generation Y. Lord knows you’ll be wasting your time at work reading this won’t you, given you spend all day f*rting around on the internet rather than doing any really work (joke, sorry, didn’t mean it, honest!).

Does Generation Y give a shit?

Yes. But it’s different shit these days. The world of work is very different now, business continues to change, media is changing daily. So there are different ways and means of progressing a career and getting the right work/life balance.

I think the commercial value of PR is right at the heart of this. While PR has always been notoriously difficult to measure, in the days of most clients focusing largely on a mixture of print and broadcast media proving you were doing a good job and so progressing within the agency was more straightforward. Got some good results with that trade campaign and the client now loves you? Good chap. Twisted that into a big splash in a national paper? Rising star that kid. Got them on telly he did, we should think about how we can develop him faster as he’s becoming more valuable to us.

These days, proving value is more difficult than ever. Yes the industry (some pockets of it at least) is working hard to address this, but still it is more difficult today to recognise that someone is progressing well in an agency job than it was 10 or 20 years ago. Managers need to have a 360 degree view of performance and achievement. In a busy world, that is not easy.

Then there’s the communication technology. Enthusiasm and achievement in the workplace used to be more audible. You had to hit the phones all day. Today more and more is done in silence. You might be the best account exec in the world getting blinding results for your clients every day, but if you rarely do anything by phone and the client does not sing your praises because they question the real commercial value, will your boss get to know about it?

Your boss should probably adopt new ways of finding out, but that’s another story.

The feedback I hear is that Generation Y does give a shit, but for different reasons. It realises the world is changing, it’s probably more in tune with that than other generations. But it too does not properly understand
the motivations of other generations and so can struggle to make sense of where this is all going. What is this agency really trying to achieve and how will it get there? What’s my part in that? How does my work really make a difference given value is so difficult to prove? And even this stuff is all addressed, will I ever be able to afford more than a bedsit in Peckham?

Pace of change seems to have knocked the wind out of PR agencies’ conventional approaches to managing and developing people. Gen Y gives a shit, but for different reasons. Again, agencies should perhaps rethink how they manage and develop people in order to achieve their commercial goals.

What does it think of other generations in PR?
I’m not sure Gen Yers really know what to think, or lose much sleep over it.

Many seem to be, or have told me, they’re jaded over their long-term prospects given the state of the economy, the prospect of an at-best meager pension, the cost of housing, etc. Fair enough. But this is a people business, it is (painfully) modernising to improve its standing and providing everyone does the right things overall, talent will rise to the top.

So is Gen Y just lacking clear direction and real inspirational leadership? It’d be a sweeping statement, but it does strike me that older people in agencies are frustrated that Gen Y doesn’t show the same drive and work ethic as them, while Gen Y questions why doing things differently would ultimately make any difference to them. Somebody has to stand up and shake things up, otherwise we’re on a slow path to shitsville.

What would make Generation Y better, more satisfied PR people?
More money? Perhaps for a little while. Not going to buy you four floors in Chelsea though is it? Yet recessions can be the best time to start businesses, create new ‘value propositions’ and profit from market changes that open new doors.

So perhaps Gen Y should be more optimistic, and realise that a different approach now could pay dividends (perhaps literally) in the future. Showing people how they can better develop their careers and enjoy their work tends to make them better at their job and makes them stick around longer.

But Gen Y can’t do it alone. If there’s one constant that seems to be jumping out from this (doubtless) riveting little serial it’s that we all need to understand each other better. And do something about it.

More tomorrow. I’ll have more time, and it might be a little feistier. It’ll be about what this means to the industry. Give me some dirt and I might name names.