log in + grind out + go home?

Ron Alsop’s investigation of Generation Y is certainly more nuanced than the excerpt from Sieberg’s article in my last post would have you believe. In his book The Trophy Kids Grow Up, Alsop argues that whilst Y-ers might need a little extra guidance on how to behave in today’s workplace, they are at least attuned to the idea that ‘you gotta work hard if you wanna get on.’

Where I think Y-ers differ significantly from their Gen X and BB colleagues is in challenging what constitutes ‘hard work’, or a ‘good day at the office’. This is where I think the task vs time argument comes in.

A lot has been written about how Gen Y are performance-driven workers whose main goal is to deliver on clearly defined targets. I agree with a lot of this. Gen Y seems less interested in processes and more interested in outcomes. Completing clear-cut tasks gives Y-ers an unambiguous sense of achievement and psychologically it allows them to shrink work down to a manageable size to prevent it from ballooning out of control and encroaching on their free time.

Work becomes a ‘things to do list’ as opposed to a period of the day spent in the office. So when the work is completed, a satisfactory outcome has been achieved, and there’s not much more which could profitably be done in the remaining time, shouldn’t the workers be able to leave? Corporotania more often than not will say NO, and will not expect to have to justify its response.

Y-ers, however, will expect a very good reason for having to hang around and sit out the clock with very little to keep them busy: after all, presenteeism for Y-ers is anathema.

But surely there’s a plus side to having staff who are task-focused. Gen Y workers may not want to hang around the office when they consider the day’s work to be done, but they are much more flexible about getting things done outside of traditional working hours if needs be: responding to emails in the evening, manning event stalls at the weekends etc. Alison Treppa’s post about Y-ers working for Not For Profit Orgs picks up on this idea.