They are tech-savvy, ambitious and easily bored and they are presenting new challenges to managers in many companies.
These youths born in early 1980s, and labelled Generation Y, did not experience major political happenings like the 1982 coup or the fight for multi-party democracy in the 1990s. They were too young to comprehend.
They are in their 20s but have arrived at the work place with fresh demands that have set the human resource managers cracking their brains.
According to a research report released on Wednesday by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the employers will have to devise new incentives to tap, retain and improve their productivity.
Some want flexible working hours, others want formal dressing code relaxed and about 23 per cent will want to change their employer in one year or less.
The report known as ‘Getting to Know Generation Y’ is intended to help companies understand this new stock of employees who are less inclined to formal straight-jacket workplace practices, mostly adopted from the colonial master.
The survey involved 1,270 respondents drawn from 36 organisations. It said 32 per cent wanted access to professional and social online networks like LinkedIn and Facebook.
Another 9 per cent wanted flexible dressing code at the place of work, 18 per cent more flexible working hours and 12 per cent gym membership.
The study was triggered by National HR survey of 2009. Human resource practitioners asked for it because generational differences had started affecting work performance in some of their companies.
“Attracting and retaining talent is becoming a business priority and is proving to be a challenge,” PWC country senior director, Mr Kuria Muchiru, said when they released the findings on Wednesday.
These challenges called for new management skills because the youths hate routine duty and like challenging tasks that are interesting.
“They say they will cope with routine work during interviews but after a short time they lose interest. They ask, ‘am a graduate what am I doing here?’” he said.
“We have huge, sometime outlandish expectations of life, the world and work place. Generation Y is absorbed in a world made possible through technology,” says Mr Charles Simba, a PWC manager.
Source: Daily Nation
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