SUZIEANA UDA NAGU, NURJEHAN MOHAMED and SHARIFAH ARFAH
A new generation of job seekers and employees with unique talents will
change the way organisations do business, write SUZIEANA UDA NAGU,
NURJEHAN MOHAMED and SHARIFAH ARFAH in this special report.
LOKMAN Teh owns a Blackberry Bold, two cars — a Nissan Skyline and a Hummer H3 — and shops at Gucci, Armani Exchange and Zara.
He
holds two jobs to sustain his lavish lifestyle — as an executive
director of Zaitun Kosmetik Industri Sdn Bhd and a buyer and seller of
new, second-hand and reconstituted cars, which he loves as “there’s no
fixed hour for this work”.
And he is only 21 years old.
A go-getter, Lokman personifies the characteristics of Generation Y (Gen Y), a group of young people under age 30, which make up 660 million people in Asia alone.
Also known as Millennials, Gen Y’s sheer size makes them a powerful cohort. Marketers are falling over themselves to appeal to this crowd and captains of industries are eager to learn about them so as to harness their skills and creativity.
Yet figuring out how to do this may be the biggest challenge current leaders will face.
In the foreword of Malaysia’s Gen Y Unplugged, a 2009 survey on Millennials at work conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers Malaysia, executive chairman Datuk Johan Raslan says that Millennials present an opportunity for businesses to put themselves ahead of the game, “provided they can navigate Gen Y’s unique abilities”.
Researchers around the globe are keenly studying Gen Y to better understand them.
While researchers are still debating Gen Y’s exact range of birth years, there seems to be a consensus that this cohort was born between 1980 and 1995.
Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) Faculty of Business Management lecturer Associate Professor Dr Roshidi Hassan says that Baby Boomers — born between 1946 and 1964 — and Generation X — born between 1965 and 1979 — generally share the same values.
“However, Gen Y are vastly different from the generations before
them,” adds Roshidi, the author of Gen Y: Managing the New Human
Resources Challenges, an essay in an upcoming book for human resources
practitioners.
Gen Y’s defining quality is their affinity with technology.
“They are tech savvy, thanks to all the time- and labour-saving gadgets they used in their childhood”.
Unlike the generations before them, Millennial workers subscribe to a different work culture.
“Baby Boomers and Gen X generally focus on their careers and they see working long hours as a requirement to get ahead.
“They also respond to the power distance or command-and-control type of management,” says Roshidi.
Gen Y workers, on the other hand, favour organisations that practise flat management where they are treated as partners rather than subordinates.
“They want to rise through the ranks but they don’t want to slave away for years to get there.
“Most of them have both parents employed and they remember how their parents invested a lot of time on advancing their careers. Millennials aren’t willing to sacrifice their social and family life for that,” says Roshidi.
According to The Malaysian Youth Career Survey 2009: Understanding the Young Malaysian Job Seeker by JobStreet.com and YouthSays.com, Millennial job-hunters are looking for flexitime and incentives like free gadgets such as iPods or iPhones.
Some 3,200 youths between ages 15 and 35 participated in the online survey.
JobStreet CAMPUS product manager Yeoh Chen Chow says: “Thirty-nine per cent of Gen Y job seekers are still looking for stable and high income work, whereas 27.5 per cent of them are looking for jobs that are aligned with their passions and interests.” If a workplace cannot provide these, Millennials would sooner quit their jobs to join another organisation or set up their own businesses than stay on — giving them the label “job hoppers”.
Some of Millennials’ most exceptional traits are also their biggest flaws.
Their obsession with computer games has made them unable to grasp the concept of “delayed gratification”, says UiTM Faculty of Business Management senior lecturer Associate Professor Dr Norzanah Mat Nor, who completed a doctoral thesis on Managing Knowledge Workers: A Study of Multimedia Super Corridor’s Status Companies in Malaysia.
“The point of every video game is to beat a record and emerge as a winner. While it has instilled a competitive spirit and thirst for adventure in Millennials, it has also made them desire instant results. “Anything that does not bring immediate reward or satisfaction is not worth their time,” she adds.
Unrealistic expectations such as these have made adjusting to the realities of the workplace a struggle for the generation.
The onus is on employers to help Millennials meet their potential at the workplace and use their innate talents to their advantage.
Norzanah believes that Millennials make good employers and leaders.
“Their competitive nature means they will strive for the best results. Their confidence enables them to think out of the box to produce fresh ideas that employers value,” she says.
This generation has also had the benefit of living in a harmonious environment, making them one of the most tolerant cohorts, says Dr Ismi Arif Ismail, head of the Professional Development and Continuing Education Department at Universiti Putra Malaysia.
| Roshidi Hassan (left) and Norzanah Mat Nor. |
“They are unencumbered by emotional baggage that previous
generations experienced such as racial tension and war. This is
something that we must preserve for the sake of nation-building,” he
adds.
The recent economic crisis has made Gen Y wise up to realities of life.
They realise that they cannot dictate terms of their careers as easily as they thought, revealed the PricewaterhouseCoopers Malaysia survey.
They are hanging on to their jobs and going back to basics — embracing integrity and dedication.
Employers should meet Millennials halfway.
“Corporations have to be creative in motivating Millennial employees. Instead of promoting them ahead of their abilities, reward them with opportunities to demonstrate their skills and execute their ideas,” says Roshidi.
Fewer people are going to hold a single job for their entire life. Companies need to adapt to the higher turnover rate, and find ways to engage and stimulate their employees.
“Organisations that fail to create measures to retain the interest of Gen Y workers will no doubt lose them,” he adds.
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