The Secret To Enagaging Generation Y

Everything in a Gen Y's life has involved "menus." Computer menus, web site menus, cell phone menus, Facebook menus and YouTube menus. For Gen Y, there have always been choices for what to do next - always.

Wherever there is a choice, there is a menu. Understanding this brutally important fact can transform your Culture in a very short time - which will be very usefull in attracting and retaining new talent.

The Gen Y world includes menus. The same rules applied growing up:

• would you like to play soccer, baseball or football? Menu.
• what do you want for your lunch tomorrow: sandwich, soup or money to go out for lunch? Menu.
• where do you want to work this summer - for your father, at DQ like last year or are you going to find something new? Menu.
• what university are you going to apply to: UBC, McGill or do you want to go to school in the US? Menu.

So for the poor Baby Boomers who can't quite figure out why Gen Y seems to have no initiative, it has nothing to do with initiative at all. If your Gen Y workers don't seem to be doing much it's because they don't have a menu of choices of what to do next. You're attempting to manage your Gen Y's like you would Gen X or Boomers and that's a huge mistake. You need to make sure your new workers have choices or at least a list of tasks that they can choose in which order they will accomplish them. That is, unless your Culture sucks - at which point it won't matter what kind of choices you offer - if the work sucks then really, what's the point?

But you can build a strong Culture of Accomplishment in your workplace by recognizing how your new workers think - they think by menu choices. Don't just expect all age-groups of workers to know what to do next. Give them choices and the work will get done. The new manager also needs to be a task-master driving collaboration and innovation. Don't just expect that your people to know what to do next. Given a menu choice of looking for something to do and doing nothing, most will choose doing nothing.

You don't have to develop menus for each person. One giant shared menu for workers will foster, better communication, better collaboration in accomplishing the tasks and develop a more engaged workplace delivering higher-quality results.

Generation Y has a good work ethic when given choices for what to do next and they will get the work done and in record time. Just don't leave them without a menu of choices. That's like the computer breaking down and the X-Box and their cell phone too, leaving them just one choice: to go back to bed. And that too, is a Menu.