São Paulo – Young people aged less than 33 are people who share information on the Web, solve their questions online instead of asking the boss, learn by trial-and-error, believe they know it all and are able to do anything, do not remain in the same company for long, and are enterprising. And the Brazilian business world is not ready to deal with them. so says Human Resources specialist and businesswoman Eline Kullock, who gave a talk on Generation Year, born from the 1980s onward, last Tuesday (4th) at the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce headquarters.
Kullock outlined a profile of these young people who are now joining the Brazilian labour market, and called on the audience, composed mainly of executives and businessmen, to find ways to live with this new human capital. “One must take the differences into account, sit down and talk,” says Kullock, illustrating the situation with Steven Spielberg’s movie E.T., in which a boy befriends an alien and helps it return to his home in another planet.
According to Kullock, the behaviour of Generation Y is mostly a result of how they were brought up by their parents, without a clear-cut hierarchical model. “We have raised them through dialogue, we have allowed them to question things,” said the specialist, who also remarked that their parents have told them and still tell them they are great and can do anything. “We have raised a more egotistical, self-centered, narcissistic generation of people who look at themselves a lot and pay little attention to their surroundings,” said Kullock.
The result is people who believe they know it all, who do not ask older people questions, who get answers to work-related questions online, just like they do with technology and videogames. “Seventy-five percent of young derive pleasure from finding out how electronic products work,” says Kullock. They learn not from their bosses, but from their peers. “How are they going to get to a company and face up to a boss who believes he possesses the knowledge?,” says the specialist. They are the Wikipedia generation, in which everyone builds the encyclopaedia together.
The model of Generation Y is that of sharing. “Very few are the companies which are ready for the sharing between young people,” says Kullock, citing cases in Brazil where employees posted texts about the company they worked for on the internet and were fired. According to her, this is not the best path for companies to take, and that instead of dismissing workers they must prepare them to share things online. All of that is part of a frame of mind that they have learned. “The brain changes, we get used to working within a certain framework,” says the businesswoman.
Kullock says that when someone learns how to use a technology while young, they use a different part of the brain than an older individual. “You will speak English perfectly if you learn it at an early age.” Time also has a different speed for people born from the 1980s onward. Kullock says she commented on a "tweet" by her nephew six hours after it was posted. “Auntie, this was six hours ago,” the nephew retorted, as if a very long time had passed. Given their low attention span, they are not likely to withstand long meetings in companies.
In company
These young people plan on spending a maximum of two years in a given company, and that also poses a problem to corporations. “In a company you must have long-term planning, an eye on the future. But they think: I won’t even be here anymore,” says Kullock. They are enterprising and innovative, and they want to be paid based on their performance. HR departments will likely undergo many changes in years to come, says the consultant, including transparency when it comes to wages, which will no longer be a secret, people working from home, professionals communicating via the internet.
This generation also has a great ability for confrontation, they are used to short sentences rather than long reports, they are used to multitasking, are unreceptive to negative feedback, have low tolerance to frustration, and a lack of ability to deal with complicated people. “We have done everything, while raising them, so that they would not be faced with frustration,” says Kullock. Kullock made it clear that it is not yet known how these professionals will fit and are fitting into corporate life, and called on the audience to find out through dialogue, in their companies.
She also gave a short profile of the three generations which preceded Gen Y. The entrepreneurs are those born between 1922 and 1943, people marked by war, whose idol was Charles Chaplin. Next came the baby boomers, born from 1943 to 1960, the peace-and-love generation, who saw the advent of colour TV and admired (Brazilian singer and songwriter) Tom Jobim. The practical generation, born from 1960 to 1980, were highly skeptical, because they watched as the promises of the preceding generation went unfulfilled, and were fans of (singer-songwriter) Cazuza. Next came the demanding generation, the iPod people who never experienced Brazil’s dictatorship regime. “They are the iPod, I can generation!,” said Kullock.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
