Sooner or later, you and your organisation will have to face a threat as great or greater than any of the recent economic recessions. It could pose a huge and potentially terminal threat to your organisation. In short, you may not have enough people to keep the organisation going, let alone growing.
Welcome to the war for Generation Y.
By 2020 Generation Y (those people born between 1980 and 2000) will comprise about one-third of the entire workforce worldwide. This in itself is reason enough for your organisation to start working on a strategy to attract and integrate Gen Y talent into your workforce. But the really alarming figure that needs to be considered alongside the Gen Y number is the rapidly declining birthrate in Thailand and many other parts of the world. This will lead to a significantly shrinking workforce in the same period.
In other words, by 2020 there will be a marked shortage of labour and the labour that is on the market will be predominantly Gen Y. And we already know that these young people have quite different characteristics compared with other generations.
To start, many of these young people were carefully planned for and wanted by parents who chose to have small families, usually just one or two children. These parents most likely waited until later in life when they felt secure in terms of their careers and finances before having children. As a result, this has made Gen Y the most pampered, doted-upon, privileged and needy generation thus far.
Pampered or not, they have also been raised and pressured to excel in every possible aspect of their lives which makes them highly goal-oriented.
What’s more, Gen Y will have the choice of who to work for, and you will be fighting every other potential employer on the market, not only for talent, but simply for enough people to keep the organisation viable; thus, the power will have shifted to the job seeker and away from the employer.
As a result, many employers are now seeking ways to harness the strengths of these groups of workers. However, in order to do so, you must truly understand their distinctiveness before you can maximise their potential.
APMGroup has generated unique insights on generations from our database of over 3,000 Thai people who have taken our personality and values assessments. An analysis of this data shows very clear differences between Gen Y and the older generations. When compared to other generations, Gen Y:
• are significantly more outgoing, social, and concerned for relationships and building networks;
• are more collaborative and relationship-oriented. They expect their employers to care for them and others, are sensitive, easily upset, and likely to quit rather than broach difficult topics;
• are more forward-thinking, strategic, risk-taking, creative, and culturally open;
• enjoy informal, creative, physically attractive environments without hierarchy;
• are independent in thought but need significant levels of encouragement, positive feedback and approval from senior figures whom they trust and who treat them with respect.
• They need their ideas and opinions to be encouraged and valued, but will benefit from clear direction and the guiding hand of a “father figure”.
Now that you realise Gen Y people are special and different, you need to build and implement a strategy specifically dedicated to attracting and retaining this particular group of people.
Next week, I will share some simple tips on things that you can do, and should be doing, right now in order to secure your future human resources from the Gen Y talent pool.
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Arinya Talerngsri is Group Managing Director at APMGroup, Thailand’s leading Organisational and People Development Consultancy. For more information, e-mail arinya_t@apm.co.th or visit www.apm.co.th. For daily updates, visit https://www.facebook.com/apmgroupthai