{"id":640,"date":"2007-02-07T07:25:47","date_gmt":"2007-02-07T13:25:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2007\/02\/engaging-gen-y-employees\/"},"modified":"2007-02-07T07:25:31","modified_gmt":"2007-02-07T13:25:31","slug":"engaging-gen-y-employees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2007\/02\/engaging-gen-y-employees\/","title":{"rendered":"Engaging Gen Y Employees"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>BusinessWeek.com&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessweek.com\/careers\/content\/feb2007\/ca20070205_629465.htm?campaign_id=rss_null\" target=\"_blank\">How to Keep Your Team Talking<\/a> is a bit of a how-to guide on running a brainstorming meeting. That, to me, is not as intriguing as looking at the management implications of properly handling Gen Y workers.<\/p>\n<p>The younger generations crave involvement in their work roles. They crave a purpose, a meaning, a mission more so than any generation before them. This mission goes beyond monetary rewards. They long to make a difference in the world through their work. This distinction is important because it points to the fact that they long to be engaged (to borrow a buzzword from the article).<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The idea behind engagement-mania is that when employees truly care about what they&#8217;re doing, beyond the simple need to pay the rent or the mortgage, everybody wins. The work is more fulfilling for employees, and the company gets the best part of its workers&#8217; brains and creative juices deployed on its projects. <\/p>\n<p>The only downside to having engaged employees is that once you&#8217;ve asked for the full use of your team members&#8217; intellects, you have to also let them go to town. It&#8217;s no good to say, &#8220;We want all of your brain cells put to work on this project and all of your creative ideas,&#8221; and then squash those ideas like bedbugs.<\/p>\n<p>So engagement is a two-way street for managers. If you ask for your employees&#8217; passion and brains, you have to actually make use of them. That&#8217;s one of the reasons why managing knowledge workers is a complicated task. Obviously, not every idea from every employee will win the day, but it&#8217;s important to keep asking for input and to keep incorporating it whenever doing so makes sense. And when employees&#8217; well-intentioned contributions aren&#8217;t exactly what&#8217;s called for, it&#8217;s important to say so &#8211; and say why.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>One thing I have noticed in our limited interaction with younger workers is that they truly do desire to have a voice within the company. The younger generation enjoys sharing ideas and crafting unique solutions. They view the corporate structure with a more horizontal perspective as opposed to the classic baby boomer hierarchy.<\/p>\n<p>I think this author is accurate in laying out techniques for encouraging and incorporating employees&#8217; brainstorming ideas. This managerial task will become increasingly more important as the younger generation assumes a greater role within the workforce.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BusinessWeek.com&#8217;s How to Keep Your Team Talking is a bit of a how-to guide on running a brainstorming meeting. That, to me, is not as intriguing as looking at the management implications of properly handling Gen Y workers. The younger generations crave involvement in their work roles. They crave a purpose, a meaning, a mission more so than any generation before them. This mission goes beyond monetary rewards. They long to make a difference in the world through their work. This distinction is important because it points to the fact that they long to be engaged (to borrow a buzzword from the article). The idea behind engagement-mania is that when&hellip; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2007\/02\/engaging-gen-y-employees\/\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14,11],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Oho-ak","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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