Millennials: Are they such a contrast as being spoken widely about?

Millennials also known as Gen-Y is identified as the demographic group of birth dates ranging somewhere from the mid-1970s to the early 2000s. The characteristics of this generation vary by region, depending on social and economic conditions. However, it is generally marked by an increased use and familiarity with communications, media, and digital technologies.

One of the consistent criticisms on the Millennials is that they possess an over-developed sense of entitlement. The logic goes something like this — after receiving a steady stream of praise throughout their lives and being told by their parents and teachers that they can “do anything they want to do”; Millennials are caught off guard by the harsh realities of the modern workplace. This is even truer during an economic downturn, when employees are expected to do more work in less time without complaint. Heck, you might not even get a “Whoo-hoo!” from your boss. Working in the so-called “real world” is not always easy, and nothing frustrates people more than a person of privilege complaining that everything isn’t exactly the way they want it to be.

Many employers are concerned that Millennials have too much of expectations from the workplace due to which they will switch jobs frequently. Studies show that many large firms are currently studying the social and behavioral patterns of Millennials.  A UK based institute researched the gap in understanding between Gen-Y recruits and their managers, and found that there are high expectations for advancement, salary and for a coaching relationship with their manager, but no hamper to the structure or business of the organization.

 When we look at the data on what is their priority, they are clearly looking at a work-life balance that has always been a distant dream for the generations before.  They demonstrate this over and over again through their need to be connected to their personal life through the day, the facilities for which were not available earlier and not utilized sufficiently by the older generation even today when available.

If all of the articles that talk about Gen-Y being difficult to fit into the current corporate work were accurate, we would have witnessed almost nonstop convulsions in the workplace over the past sixty years, and knowledge work environments that look nothing like they did a few generations ago. But instead we still have org charts that mean something, jobs with narrowly defined responsibilities, promotions, bosses and subordinates, and most of the other longstanding trappings of organizational life.

Absolutely millennials have different technology habits and preferences than before. That has been so with every changing generation.  The solution as always would be for organizations to adapt and accommodate the changing foray of work-life balance and yet make the best use of Gen-Y. After all anyone can be a Millenial if they are tech-savvy, open-minded to all kinds of diversity, and are into the latest in everything from career to entertainment. If we do not adapt then today's workplaces will change Generation Y more than the reverse.

Time to manage perception!

Performance Feedback – A crucial business activity

This time of the year, organisations are overhauling their performance management system to better its impact on organisation performance.  Most of the organisations provide just one opportunity for formal feedback to employees about their contribution towards organisation performance, at the most two.  Using this only opportunity flawlessly is crucial, not only to set the platform for next year organisation performance, but also to fulfil an important employment value proposition.

To positively impact organisation performance, every employee should trust the performance management process.  It is important that employees perceive performance management system to be fair, meritorious and equitable.  Every manager need to ensure that all their team members perceive the system to be fair.  An employee may evaluate the fairness quotient at multiple points and definitely during large foot print items like goal setting, performance feedback and rewards.  Our focus in this article is about performance feedback. 

Performance data on individual contribution comes handy to set context during feedback.  It brings the manager and the team member to the same page.  Keeping this data-based discussion as a foundation, moving on to next level discussion by explaining relative performance of the team member makes a great manager.  Discussing the relative performance of individuals describing the difference between expectation against reality bring in subjectivity to the discussion.  While there can be a number assigned as rating at the end of the discussion, managers will agree that the algorithm to arrive at that number is extremely complex as it may vary from manager to manager and team member to team member.  The good news is that there can be a table that a manager can refer to which would only need to be customised to organisation.

Perception is not built over this one time interaction rather; it is over a series of interactions.  A manager constantly communicates opinion on performance over different settings like review meetings, day to day interactions, recognition programs, email communications about things going good and not so good etc.  This time of the year, when manager gets ready to give feedback in a formal setting, it is important that managers collects the thoughts together, consolidates all informal feedback given and communicate in the formal, structured performance feedback session.

Actively listening, without preparing on counter arguments is crucial to manage the right perception about performance management process among employees.  Actively listening helps consolidating the employees views into a pattern that may be aligned or not aligned to the teams micro work culture.  Manager may attempt to build on the observed employee view point and take the thought process to next level.

                                                                                                                                                        

Performance feedback is an opportunity to exhibit genuine care in the employees’ career growth.  Career growth is an important value proposition the managers can play an active role in.

We will discuss more in the blogs to come.