Turn high maintenance into high performance

Boomers, you think your Gen Y employees are lazy and unproductive? Whose kids are these, anyway?  Gosh, did our generation really create these high maintenance monsters?

But wait a minute! Sure, Gen Yers can be high maintenance in the workplace. But if managed properly they are more prolific than any generation that precedes them.

These kids have been hyper-scheduled since the time they could crawl, with after-school and weekend activities galore. They have had the ability to communicate instantly with anyone and everyone since they were old enough to hold a cell phone. They have found the answer to any question that pops into their head within seconds via the internet. The bottom line is that they learned how to multitask before they could even spell the word multitask.

My personal experience has been that managing Gen Yers is much like having a gifted child that needs to be kept engaged and challenged at all times in order to be productive. Yes, Gen Yers are high maintenance to manage. But if managed properly they are the most productive workers in the world. Here’s the trick – you have to manage them! Don’t coddle them, or pretend that your workplace is a daycamp.

Set high standards, be very specific about what you expect, address small problems before they become larger, and provide praise and reward only when your expectations are met.

No, I’m not the first person to think of this. In fact, one of my favorite management gurus, Bruce Tulgan, has a new book about it called Not Everyone Gets a Trophy. But somehow the naysayers keep getting airplay.

Yes, you can whine and moan and remind everyone how our generation never needed constant feedback and how wonderfully independent and self-motivated we were. How we rolled up our sleeves and figured things out and worked till midnight.

Or we can embrace the joy of managing smart, resourceful, ambitious people. Keep them busy with challenging work, keep them informed on how they are doing, and what it takes for them to get where they want to be.