The trouble with interns

'They don’t need ping-pong tables and lava lamps in the office. Their greatest phobia is boredom, lack of purpose'
10 April 2012

They're Generation Y and they want to do things their way. But don't be thrown: there are ways of getting the best out of them in the office, says Philip Delves Broughton...

David Letterman, the American talk show host, occasionally features a character who slumps down in the chair reserved for his celebrity guests, wearing jeans, trainers and a camp sneer. He is Lyle the Intern, a sarcastic, idle, vaguely deviant representative from Generation Y, the millennials, those who came of age after 2000.

"Lyle, don't you have something to do?" asks Letterman, as Lyle sprawls beside him.

"We're all God's children, David, we've all got work to do," replies Lyle, without moving.

The arrival of the latest flock of summer interns is a good time to consider this challenge of managing across generations, and in particular dealing with younger workers who may have a different idea of what work might, or should, entail.

I recently walked around the City of London with a salesman from a major food company, going door to door to restaurants and corner shops pitching his product. He was 18 years old, going to university in the autumn, and he seemed to be enjoying himself, so I asked if many of his friends were interested in similar sales jobs. "No," he said. "It's too difficult. It doesn't have the buzz of an easy job."

It was the sort of comment that gives Generation Y their reputation for having a sense of entitlement, with a view of the world shaped by the almost uninterrupted economic boom of the past three decades. Combine that view with a change in parenting and teaching towards encouraging self-esteem as the primary goal of child-rearing, and you have a group of young adults who can be challenging for an older generation to manage.

In his latest book, Not Everyone Gets a Trophy: How to Manage Generation Y, the American business guru, Bruce Tulgan, tries to dispel some misconceptions and offers advice to those mystified by the fleets of Facebookers filling their offices.

The greatest misconception of all, Tulgan argues, is that Generation Y need to be humoured. They do not need ping-pong tables and lava lamps in the office, or costume days or free doughnuts. Their great phobia is not seriousness or hard work, but boredom and lack of purpose.

They mistrust large organisations and "systems" and tend to be much more motivated by specific outcomes than long-term promises of career advancement. Much of this stems from a proper awareness that no job is for ever any more and that companies and seemingly sturdy economic structures can be overturned in a moment.

They have grown up in a time when multi-billion-pound companies, like Google, can be created in a few years, and established industries, like newspapers, can find themselves seriously eroded in the same span of time.

Tulgan writes that when Gen Y-ers see a large organization, they don't think: "I wonder where I'll fit in your complex picture", but rather: "I wonder where you will fit in my life story." What they seek in every area of their life is customisation. They want to download individual songs rather than entire albums to create their own playlists on their iPods. They choose from a wide array of diets and exercise habits to create the bodies they want. They build unique social networks among friends they see every day and those they make online. They may prefer to work to their own time rather than nine to five, but do a better job for it. The worst thing you could tell them is that they must be like everyone else.

Cut through all of that, however, and you will find that they have very similar ambitions to those of generations before them: to make a good living, to have the respect of their peers, to do interesting work. The challenge is to tap into those desires that are consistent across ages and filter out the habits that are not.

For example, Gen Y-ers are often seen as disrespectful towards employ-ers and managers. They believe they can run the show from the moment they arrive. In fact, says Tulgan, the kind of loyalty and respect they offer are those a business might expect from a customer. He calls it "free market loyalty". They will give you the loyalty and respect you earn, nothing more. They will not respect your title or position, but will respect what you actually do and the resources you control.

Equally, they will chafe at "grunt work", but make a tremendous effort if they know they are being watched and properly credited. They will not put in the hours in the vague hope of some distant reward or promotion, but will for more immediate recognition. They do not want to "run the show", but they do want to feel they are making an impact.

They do not believe in climbing career ladders, but rather in self-development, learning, building networks and proving their capacity to add value in varied situations. "Instead of climbing a ladder," writes Tulgan, "they are making a tapestry."

So what is the manager to do? Recognize that however they come across, the Gen Y-ers are coming to work to work. So be firm about that. Don't waste their time. Set up a series of attainable goals that accumulate towards a larger reward. "Managers should spell out the rules of their workplace in vivid detail so Gen Y-ers can play that job like a video game: if you want A, you have to do B, if you want C, you have to do D, and so on," says Tulgan.

Recognise their output and don't fret about the means by which they achieve it. If they want to spend 10 minutes of each hour on Facebook but get their work done by skipping lunch, don't get on their case. If they don't seem to know much when they arrive, but can use technology to discover whatever they need, who cares, as long as the outcomes are the same?

But above all, as any schoolteacher could tell you, don't under any circumstance try to be their friend. If they want you in their network, they will ask.

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