- We used to have three interns on our team. June came, we prepared schedules for the entire team and arranged holidays. And suddenly, halfway through the month, all three sent an email. They wrote that it was great, but they had to rest and go on vacation because it was summer. I went crazy.
Ewa is 48 years old, works in a large company and has people of different ages in her team, including people in their twenties.
- I look at these colleagues with kindness, but I know that this is a "completely different story." They have completely different priorities than work and they say it directly. If they happen to oversleep before going to the office at 9 a.m., "nothing happened, their body probably needed it." I get stressed when I'm stuck in a traffic jam and I know I'll be at the office at 9.05 However, a conversation during which someone evaluates their work is stressful for them. What I mean is a polite, calm conversation with the manager who shows the employee's strengths and weaknesses, suggests what can be done better, and finally asks: how do you feel? What can I improve in our communication? I have heard more than once from young people that such contact and meeting embarrasses them...
- One quarter of the problems in large companies concern communication in teams, says Róża Szafranek, an HR expert with many years of psychological and managerial experience. - And these are the so-called communication problems.. Because on the one hand, there are millennials, brought up in a culture of "die hard work". They follow the rule that if you want to achieve something, you work 14 hours a day. This generation has built companies this way, lives this way, has this way of thinking. And many millennials today go "nowhere". What does it mean? Senior managers or people with extensive experience in corporations are burnt out and tired, and if they can afford it, they take a break from work for several months.
"Suddenly, people who worked very hard and were taught this work ethos are disappearing from the labor market," the expert continues. - It then turns out that you have to manage employees who have a different approach. But the managers are also exhausted, so they have a short fuse with the 20-year-olds they hired. The circle closes.
- In 2024, we will have a communication crisis on the labor market, predicts Róża Szafranek. - People will throw papers from day to day, there will be staff shortages. I warn managers that they will have to assume 15-20 percent. additional funds in the budget for training and employing additional project managers, because today, compared to managing a group of 40-year-olds, managing the same number of 20-year-olds requires twice as much time and effort. This is because young people really need interaction and the division of tasks. Millennials were given a task and they took over it with full responsibility, it was a very basic competence, important for the employer. And today people don't have that. Young people say: give me ten small tasks, because if I have the whole area, I won't be able to handle it.
- 20-year-olds also have no responsibility, and many things are too stressful for them - explains Róża Szafranek. - These are situations that are completely normal for 40-year-olds. But it's not like they can freely say to each other: not this job, another one. Today there is little money on the market and the number of jobs is falling. Still, it doesn't scare twenty-year-olds. They say "I'm OK with that, I don't have to have money because I don't have to have it." "I can work in a cafe in Portugal, earn $200 and live with seven people." For millennials, this is unthinkable. For them, having things in the sense of buying an apartment or saving something on the side is important for a sense of security.
- 20-year-olds prefer to live in harmony with themselves, they don't have to have this status, they don't have to have money. They are able to say: now I'm going to the office, I'll transfer the papers. If they hear: with this approach you won't develop so quickly. But for them, development is not the only measure of success.
Róża Szafranek also adds that classification and specificity are important for 20-year-olds at work.
- They say: okay, so I have five things written in the job description, and today two new things appeared at work. So what's really going on with me? When it comes to overtime, they are also able to say: I won't come after 6 p.m. because I found out about it too late, I have other plans. Or: if I come, how will I perceive it? I don't see it as demanding, that they want more. I think their boundaries are very firm. I think we are not used to this.
The expert adds that generational conflicts between millennials and 20-year-olds at work mainly concern the latter's lack of independence.
- We expect young people to take on new tasks as quickly and as willingly as the boomer generation or the millennial generation. Millennials said, just throw it all at me and I'll figure it out. But today young people will say: I'm sorry, but I think I need to get a set of tasks from you along with a deadline. "What should I do? What will I be rewarded for?" Young people are unlikely to notice that something is missing in the office and they will not report it, for example, to HR. They have no such responsibility for shared property. And millennials get mad at them for this and say: well, you don't feel like you're part of this company at all. But on the other hand, young people are very socially and ecologically sensitive. For example, if someone says "hello gentlemen, it's good to see you", the younger generation will be the first to speak up and say: there are also ladies in the room.
"Maybe they're right," Agata wonders aloud. - Maybe we have made this whip against ourselves in the form of the belief that we have to always give a million percent at work and fulfill all the boss's whims, because if we don't, someone will fire us. Maybe this is how you should live, take care of yourself first, then everything else? There's only one thing that bothers me about these twenty-year-old friends. When I have a cold, I take vitamins, strengthen my body, work from home for a day, and then return to the office. And they take a sick leave for any cold. They come to the office, sniffle, and you already know who won't be there the next day...
Noeline does fit a stereotype, doesn't she. I'd not like to work for her but she's probably good company if there's booze and suburban oneupmanship going on. Must be well in her 80s now.
I was just reading what happened to them all since. Several of them went right down the pan and others didn't .
Brits are controlled (maybe a bit too tightly) by the superego Australians keep the Id a _lot_ closer to the surface...
When Freud built the superego, he anchored it in the sky over southern England to give them all complexes. As for Aussies, their ancestors were transported there for punishment because their ids were out of control. Maybe there's some heredity, biological or more probably cultural that made all the bogans, larrikins and bludgers.
Northern English like to think we're a little different, though the stereotype in Harry Enfield's Yorkshireman is somewhat exaggerated.
