Last night I was acting as the stand-up after-dinner act for a group of British CEOs from a retail-focused industry. They wanted to know about Generation Y and how to engage them – something that’s crucial in the current climate. I focused first on technology, since that is one undeniable generational difference, and since we now have hard facts from the first global Digital Generation Survey (www.theDgeneration.com).
Most of them agreed that technology has enabled a revolution in the style and pace of communication. But then I threw in a grenade: “Many employers – perhaps half in the UK - have even banned Facebook” I said. “Imagine that! It’s like saying ‘come and join us, and by the way we’re going to switch off oxygen after you join.’”
Sometimes we researchers forget that our statistics may actually be true. At this point, as I should have predicted, almost exactly half of the room erupted: “We had to ban it! How could we let them do all that personal stuff in work time?” “I don’t pay people to socialise, I pay people to work!”; “There is time set aside for breaks”.
The other half responded: “My staff choose to come in at 7.30 in the morning; how can I tell them how to use their time during the day?” “If they don’t use company systems, they’ll do it on their mobiles”. “Facebook can have work-related benefits too – our company has a Facebook group (so I’m told)”.
It was a great debate, and for me it was not primarily about technology, it was about ideas, talent, passion and discretionary effort. How can we get those things from people if we always seek to control, not to enable? Could we not manage outputs rather than time? Which do we pay people for: Their time or their ideas? Of course it’s not a simple argument: In many types of work we pay them for both.
But some things are simple, in my view. We cannot control discretionary effort. And we know there are huge quantities of wasted talent (as Philip Sadler from Tomorrow's Company points out, ‘latent’ is an anagram of talent). Therefore, we must find ways to make work more engaging, and to empower people to create value. It may not be through Facebook, but it will certainly be through relationships – with customers, colleagues, suppliers and with each other. It will be based on face-to-face relationships (Gen Y want offices, says recent Vodafone research) combined seamlessly with new tools.
That’s what excites me most about these new technologies: At last we have tools that reflect the relationship-driven way in which the world really works. And with social media, this can result in lower costs (user-generated content rather than paid writers), greater collaboration (as companies like BT adopt social networking tools internally) and – over time – greater transparency about people’s performance so that the very best rewards can more closely follow those who generate the best results.
Jonathan Winter is Founder of The Career Innovation Company (Ci), a workplace innovation 'lab' for some of the world’s best-known companies, helping them increase business agility and gain recognition as inspiring places to work. Ci is a partner in the Tomorrow's Global Talent programme.