Generation Why? by Shawn McCadden

I once tried to make the case for hiring Gen Y’ers to the Painters and Decorating Contractors of America.  I am not a great orator and I don’t think my message was received as well as I’d hoped.  Shawn McCadden does a much better job in the following article:

Eventually the remodeling market will become healthy again. To prepare for that, remodelers will need to ramp up their personnel. The available workforce will include members of “Generation Y,” that is, the more than 75 million people born somewhere between 1975 and 1995. Remodelers who operate their businesses with a long-term perspective need to understand what is different about this generation, which will eventually make up the majority of those in our industry.

What Gen Y’s Want

One significant difference about Gen Y, or what I’m calling “Generation Why,” is that they have grown up questioning their parents and everything they have been exposed to. Unlike generations before them, they’ve been pampered, nurtured, and scheduled with a wide variety of structured activities since they were infants. This generation also wants their jobs to accommodate their family and personal lives with job flexibility and opportunities for quick advancement. The combination of these characteristics results in a workforce that’s both high-performance and high-maintenance.

This generation won’t reinvent the wheel. Its members Google everything and rely on social media to find and qualify what works, adopt it, and then make it better. If you’ve been running your business with an authoritative and Calvinistic management approach that includes a lot of micromanaging, you’ll need to adjust your approach if you expect to attract and keep this new demographic of employee. As one 23-year-old put it, “We are willing and not afraid to challenge the status quo. An environment where creativity and independent thinking are looked upon as a positive is appealing to people my age. We’re very independent and tech-savvy.”

The Tech Effect

Another important consideration is that this generation grew up with technology, and many may not be able to be productive without it. If your business (…read the rest here)