By Mike Byfield

Generation Y, now aged 12 to 25, is launching its first professional careers. They are Canada's most self-assured youngsters to date. They're also the least able to mentally focus yet digitally the canniest. More idealistic than Gen X. Enamored of interesting experience at least as much as money. Typically influenced more by celebrities and emotionally compelling stories than by rational analysis. Highly prone to job jumping. That's the group portrait drawn by Wendy Lowe, executive director of the Calgary Pregnancy Care Centre and a devoted observer of this emerging employee pool.

"Gen Y's oldest members are pouring into the workplace, so employers and other managers need information about them," explains Lowe (shown here), who last week addressed the Petroleum Institute For Continuing Education. Over the past 28 months, she's spoken about Generation Y to nearly 100 industry and non-profit associations, companies and other groups. Her insights are drawn from 18 years of heading a pregnancy counselling service as well as compulsive reading - Lowe routinely inhales 100 to 150 books a year. "At the care centre, we follow closely how our younger clients make life-altering decisions and the best ways of communicating with them," she notes.

Here are behaviour traits that Lowe considers important to Generation Y's employers:

* This generation makes many decisions intuitively. "A Gen Y engineer will design a natural gas plant by the empirical rules of science but his or her attitude to personal issues from free range eggs to the Afghan war will typically be based much more on 'How do I feel about it?' For example, a doctor may choose to work just three days a week or an employee may refuse a career-enhancing assignment because it doesn't feel right. Their apparent irrationality can drive older managers nuts," Lowe adds with a smile.

* Generation Y is idealistic about how the world should be. Besides offering good wages, potential employers get quizzed about protecting the environment and community contributions. Gen Y members are also exceptionally prone to depression, in part because reality stubbornly fails to meet their ideals. Latch-key parenting and heavy divorce rates probably didn't help.

* Schooled by "child-centred" teachers, the incoming wave of skilled workers expects to be heard even when they have little in the way of experience. In a national job market that's short of younger employees with good training, Gen Y's educated members realise that employers need them.

* Corporate mentoring programs are necessary but not enough. "Gen Y employees want a mentoring experience," Lowe says. "They'll ask questions about work-life balances, office politics and other stuff that used to be considered more personal than professional. Be prepared for a relationship."

* A Gen Y professional may wonder what's wrong with a colleague who's spent five years in the same position. "Your organization should get its young hires productive quickly because they'll often be gone within three years," Lowe warns. "Try to end each relationship on good terms so your company can recapture that worker later when his skills are further developed."

* Generation Y's attitude to authority is even less hierarchical than their parents from the freewheeling 1960s and '70s. "The CEO of a sophisticated operation cannot personally absorb today's range of information," Lowe says. "The person at the top of the organization chart does not know it all. In response, decision processes are flattening into more collegial patterns. Gen Y will fit readily into that evolution."

Lowe, whose father farmed and drove trucks in northern British Columbia, was educated in Bible colleges attuned to several millennia of Judeo-Christian experience. The human thought process, she notes, has gone through very few fundamental changes during that time. Initially, people relied on legend and personal experience. Roughly 2,500 years ago, writing and mathematics became widespread, providing ruling elites with the data needed for broadly-informed analysis. That capability reached the middle class 600 years ago thanks to the printing press. And there matters stood until the 1960s.

"Individual character varies widely due to factors like birth order, rural or urban roots, and country of origin. Even so, generational tendencies can also be identified by social research," the care centre director comments. The oldest generation working today - those over 60 - are often labelled Traditionalists. In the classic fashion of western civilization, Lowe says, they rely heavily on written words and numbers. Their favoured value is loyalty, to employers, church, country and so forth. Traditionalists, who make up five percent of the work force, believe education was their most important gift to their children.

Today's managers hail mostly from the Baby Boom, born between 1946 and 1964. In place of Traditionalist loyalty, according to Lowe, Boomers cherish individual liberty. They've also worked hard to give their children material benefits. In decision-making, they tend to think empirically like their parents. But the cult of television and celebrity deepened dramatically during their youth. For example, pop singers like the Beatles molded public attitudes in ways that earlier crooners like Frank Sinatra definitely did not.

Because Boomers had access to birth control pills and abortion, Gen X (1965-1980) is a relatively small demographic, making up 40% of today's payroll. "Those numbers will erode from now on," Lowe points out. Generation X learned in the 1980s and '90s that corporations would lay them off if necessary, she says. "Where Boomers were inclined to be rebellious in their youth, Xers are skeptical and pragmatic. Their career moves usually aim at enhancing their own marketable skills."

Gen Y, raised in prosperous times, seems more prone to idealism than skepticism or rebellion. "If that idealism can be harnessed, some sociologists hope Gen Y's achievements could become as significant as the Traditionalists," Lowe says. That's a lofty target. The Great Generation won World War Two and then created the foundation of our current prosperity. Unfortunately, Gen Y may not have the best coaches. The dominant source of its ideals is pop culture - film and rock stars, fashion designers and models, snowboard champions and the like. This crop of kids is sometimes called "screen-agers" because they've been staring into them since birth.

Due to the Internet, Generation Y's culture is networked to a degree that parents frequently fail to grasp. An average youth in this age bracket has 450 names on his or her instant and text messaging lists, Lowe insists. "I know non-profit groups with shorter mailing lists than that," she adds. Also proliferating online are personal blog-type sites, photo albums, Internet multi-player games and a good deal more. "When these people work for you, they probably know the going salary rates better than you do," the pregnancy centre leader suggests.

"Both Gen X and Y are quicker on average than older people at identifying and sifting online information sources," she continues. "On the other hand, they're usually poorer at focusing on a single task." This lack of concentration capacity stems in part from doing homework amid a media-saturated blare of images and conversations. "Employers should do whatever they can to help their Generation Y staff learn to focus," the care centre director advises.

At worst, the Baby Boom manager will view his Gen Y hireling as a job-hopping slacker with attention deficit disorder and entitlement issues. In return, his young employee may view his grey-haired boss as a micro-managing workaholic. "If this happens too often, your team is not likely to thrive in the future," Wendy Lowe warns. "But every generation brings its own strengths to its work and I'm sure capable managers will get superb results from Generation Y."

----

Are we really that different?