Friday, December 23, 2011

The Coffee House Worker

Early on a Wednesday morning in your favorite coffee house you refill your halfway cold coffee and add a fuse of half and half before splashing back down at your normal table to regroup your thoughts. While you sit there thinking of how you are going to plan out your day, there is someone just getting up and reluctantly slamming their sleepy hand down on the alarm clock that beckons their lifeless body to get up and drag itself to work. They dream about your ideal lifestyle while you dream about accomplishing the relevant revenue you want to bring in for the day. What is the difference between these people?

Both these employees dream about success and are self-motivated. One employee has taken the plunge to work outside of the office, but...WAIT! Are they really "taking the plunge"? No! This is the new lifestyle of working for many young adults and preferable in the younger generation within small to medium sized businesses. They are being managed, but given the freedom of working on their own schedule.

The younger generation, called the Y-Generation, has used technology throughout their life from the moment they became aware of their surroundings. Because of this constant availability of knowledge and communication, they view their work availability as a 24/7 process in a virtual setting. Working at odd hours and from unique locations, this generation has a tendency to excel in these situations, however their downfall is that these hours tend to be spread around their lifestyle. While work is important, work is integrated into their lifestyle and becomes a part of who they are internally. When the dissonance between work and lifestyle differ too greatly, you will see turnover. And most of the time, when given the freedom to work outside of the office, this generation will put in more time than a normal 9a-5p employee.

So, you need to hire younger employees to move your company to the next level, but only have a "normal" sense of the word "job" available. What now? To reduce a high percentage of cognitive dissonance, an employee within this generation should be given the creative freedom to perform their job to the best of their ability. While you might find them texting or on a social media site during work, you have to remind yourself of their desire to mix pleasure with work and then turn the question back to yourself and your company. Am I providing enough social and creative stimulation for this person? What can I do to further learn how this person is motivated? If you slap their hands and reprimand them, you are bound to lose this employee over time, especially if there is no upward movement available in your company within the next two years.

How you manage this generation will determine how they function within your company in the end. Stick them in a cubicle and throw filing at an astute, recent graduate with the ability to self-motivate themselves to the top and you will whisk the desire right out of them and they will start shopping around for another  job. Give them a cubicle and filing with the freedom to develop systems and think creatively and they might just eliminate the need for filing altogether.