Younger Workers: Reflection on Two

Younger Workers: Reflection on Two Views

According to Cam Marston's article "Retaining young workers," younger workers are loyal to individuals, not to institutions. They may occasionally show loyalty to a particularly charismatic boss who has won their respect -- and they always care about themselves. The purpose of life, in their point-of-view is self-actualization, not putting in hours at the office and following a rigid career track. They tend to be more immature than their parents -- most are still searching for how to grow up. However, while it is certainly statistically true that younger workers have fewer personal and family obligations than previous generations of employees had, the devil-may-care attitude delineated by Marston seems more typical of an earlier, healthier economy. This attitude seemed more common in the mid-1990s, rather than the more anxious job market of today. Furthermore, many companies with a largely younger workforce, like Google, have employees who are extremely loyal. Google has also been able to make the 'work is something you do between weekends' ethos 'work' for it, by creating a fun and innovative workplace, where company outings, employee cafeterias, gyms, and other perks are part of the workday. In short, young workers do change with changes in the economy, culture is not unalterable, and they can become loyal to a company.

Rather than attribute a failure to draw, cultivate, or retain young 'talent' to the cultural clash between young and older employees, Martha Lagace instead focuses on structural problems within an organization that inhibit the retention of young employees. She points out that talent-identification systems in large and small organizations tend to be more effective than the less clearly designed, yet impersonal identification systems in mid-sized companies. Lagace stresses on the need for management training programs to train workers to be more flexible to meet the needs of the next generation, not merely the here and now. However, in her stress upon flexibility, she also implies that young workers need to change, and be trained in different methods of leadership, and that management does not need to accept every generational trend as unalterable. She views the attitudes of young college graduates as far more malleable than Marston does, and emphasizes the need for young workers to adapt to organizational needs than vice versa. Her view of mentoring seems more conventional than Marston's, however Marston's analysis seems overly broad and sweeping, and more applicable to certain economic points in time, industries, and points in worker's lives (when they are in entry-level jobs, for example, and have no dependants), rather than to an entire generation.