The division of people based on age groups is a western concept, to be more precise, the typical definitions of Generations are based on socio-economic development in USA. What relevance does it have to India or this part of the world?

Most studies in the West would identify work-life balance as one of the key drivers of Generation Y, yet our studies in Sri Lanka and in India do not support this.

Key points:

1. Engagement levels of Gen Y are less than older age groups. However, this may have less to do with age than other factors.
2. Tenure in the organisation and seniority in hierarchy (roles) seems to drive these differences more than age. Using tenure as a lens to look at employee engagement can be more productive than using age.
3. The top key drivers of overall perception of working at a great workplace are the same for Gen Y and other generations.
4. The majority of the best workplaces seem to do a good job of engaging all generations and are not obsessed with only Gen Y.
5. Strategies for engagement will be more effective by looking at factors like tenure, level, educational and socio-economic backgrounds, rather than trying to look at employees purely on basis of generations.

Generation Y is the generation born in the 1980s and 1990s, comprising primarily the children of the baby boomers (born between 1946 & 1964) and typically perceived as increasingly familiar with digital and electronic technology. Our research of Indian organisations reveals that 72 per cent of employees fall in this category. This is by far the largest segment of the workforce. There are more than 6 million hits on Generation Y on the web. There are thousands of papers written about this generation. And yet, very little is available by way of established facts. The division of people based on age groups is a western concept, to be more precise, the typical definitions of Generations are based on socio-economic development in USA. What relevance does it have to India or this part of the world? Most studies in the West would identify work-life balance as one of the key drivers of Generation Y, yet our studies in Sri Lanka and in India do not support this. There are pet theories of managers and management experts about how this generation is independent, likes flexibility, wants a higher purpose, requires frequent feedback and is impatient. Last year, Great Place to Work Institute surveyed over 200,000 employees in more than 500 organisations in India and in Sri Lanka. None of the pet theories outlined above were validated.

Engagement levels of Gen Y are lower than other generations It is a fact that engagement levels of employees less than 35 years of age (Generation Y) are less than other age categories. Younger employees are less positive about precisely the areas you would expect them to be less positive about, namely fair pay and fair share of profits, involvement in decision making and a desire to stay in the organisation for a long time. These areas are similar to the areas where junior employees are significantly less positive than senior managers. Younger employees also give lower scores to managers’ making expectations clear, delivering on promises and on feeling cared for as a person by their managers. Again, this could be more a reflection of inadequate people management capabilities of middle managers, than a distinctive trait in a particular “generation”. What is interesting for older employees and senior managers alike is that younger employees and employees lower in the hierarchy both perceive a higher level of politicking, managers playing favourites and partiality in decisions like promotions. Again, politicking and favouritism are major concerns only among managers who compete in the rat race, and not among operators and below- supervisory categories.

Let us for a moment assume that Generation Y (born after 1980) is significantly different from other Generations. Since Generations have mostly been categorised by age it is easy to see how perceptions differ for different generations. If we take the age groups of 26 to 35 years as representative of Gen Y, 35 to 45 years as representative of Gen X and above 45 years as representative of Baby Boomers, two observations are apparent based on the survey responses of these age groups in over 400 organisations in India.

1. There are significant differences in perceptions about an organisation’s workplace culture between Gen Y and other generations.
2. Gen Y is closer to Gen X than Baby Boomers. In other words, the lower the age difference, the closer are perceptions.

On the surface, point 1 seems to validate the arguments of many researchers that Gen Y is significantly different. Point 2 seems to contradict some views that claim that Gen Y is closer to Baby Boomers (Grandfather Generation) than Gen X (Father’s Generation).

Let us look closely at the areas where the differences between Gen Y positive perceptions are lower than that of Gen X by a minimum of 5 points and a minimum of 10 points with Baby Boomers. (10 points higher perception would mean that among the survey respondents, 10 per cent more Baby Boomers are giving positive response to positively worded survey statements, compared to Gen Y). The areas of biggest difference (as described above) are on perceptions regarding the following areas:

1. Retention I want to work here for a long time’
2. Fair pay and fair share of profits
3. Management delivering on promises
4. Job security ‘Management will lay off people only as a last resort’
5. Caring-showing sincere interest in me as an employee and not just as a resource
6. Impartiality avoiding politicking and favouritism and promotions going to people who deserve them
7. Pride in my work – ‘My work has special meaning; it’s not just a job’
8. Communication – making expectations clear, approachable management and getting straight answers to reasonable questions
9. Collaboration – involving people in decisions that affect their jobs or work

Tenure in the organisation and level in the hierarchy may drive engagement more than just age. Before you jump to conclusions about Gen Y, consider this additional piece of information. When we compare the perceptions of employees who have spent 20 years or more in the Company and employees with 1 to 2 years of tenure in the Company, the same areas emerge. In fact, 10 of the 14 areas of highest difference in perception between Gen Y and other generations and between 1 to 2 years of tenure and over 20 years of tenure are common!

“Of course,” you will say, “It is fairly obvious that 1 to 2 years of tenure is likely to be a Gen Y and 20 years of tenure is likely to be a 40 plus Gen X or Baby Boomer.” We do not have to guess. Cross tabulation of our data tells us that 86 percent of survey respondents with 1 to 2 years of tenure are in fact Gen Y and 81 percent of survey respondents with more than 20 years of tenure are 45 plus years of age (Baby boomers).

The big question is that having established that age and tenure data is largely common, i.e less than 2 years of tenure is likely to be a Gen Y and more than 20 years of tenure is likely to be a Baby Boomer, is it age that is responsible for the differences in perception or is it tenure in the organisation?

The difference in perceptions, in my opinion, is more to do with factors within the organisation like tenure rather than individual characteristic like age. A few years ago, we started tracking perceptions of employees in the first year of joining, closely, breaking it down to first 6 months and next 6 months. New employees in the first 6 months usually have high positive perceptions that drop significantly after 6 months and some more after 1 year. This trend is arrested after 5 years and it is only after 10 years of tenure that employees who stay back display higher positive perceptions about their workplace compared to those in the first 6 months! Assuming, as our data shows, most employees with less than 6 months tenure are Gen Y, why would the sharpest drop happen within 6 months of joining? Surely, this drop has less to do with age increasing by 6 months, and more with factors internal to the organisation? Similarly, there are other areas viz. “I make a difference here”, where there is a significant difference within Gen Y- where younger Gen Y have lower perceptions, compared to older Gen Ys.

In other words, instead of saying Gen Y has lower engagement; we can say that, as a rule, employees with lower tenure have lower engagement than employees with higher tenure.

Designation	Less than 6 months	6 months to 1 year	1 year to 2 years	3 years to 5 years	6 years to 10 years	11 years to 15 years
Supervisory	43%	45%	48%	44%	37%	28%
Managerial	44%	43%	41%	43%	46%	46%
Senior Managerial	12%	12%	10%	13%	17%	26%
Grand Total	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%

Note: Data based on self-selection of demographics by survey respondents

Assuming tenure in the organisation is the real reason for the differences in positive perceptions, we need to check one more data point. Does seniority or level in the organisation have something to do with tenure? A look at the table above will reveal that the higher the tenure, the larger is the proportion of senior managers, and the lower is the proportion of supervisors. (Data taken for supervisory level and above).

Let us now relook at the 9 biggest gaps which we originally thought were related to age. If higher tenure means higher age and to some extent more seniority, it becomes relatively easy to understand what is happening. Tenured employees and senior managers have better perception about:

1. Retention intent to stay long in the organisation. 2. Fair pay and fair share of profits
2. Management delivering on promises
3. Job security
4. Caring showing sincere interest in me as an employee and not just as a resource
5. Impartiality avoiding politicking and favouritism and promotions going to people who deserve them
6. Pride in my work ‘My work has special meaning, it’s not just a job’
7. Communication – making expectations clear, approachable management and getting straight answers for reasonable questions
8. Collaboration – involving people in decisions that affect their jobs or work

The moment we start viewing engagement data through the prism of tenure and seniority, rather than through the prism of age, the reasons and counter-measures seem easier to handle. While the purpose of this article is not to recommend counter measures, a quick response to deal with these 9 areas could be:

1. Building the line manager’s capability which in turn impacts perceptions about staying longer, delivering on promises, caring and impartiality
2. A transparent and equitable process for sharing rewards and handling impact of business down swings, like layoffs etc.
3. Credible processes for performance management and employee appeals.

More importantly, rather than pursue the bogey of age, we can focus on the real challenge of dealing with the drop in employee perceptions after their first 6 months in an organization and why these perceptions remain low for up to 5 years or so after joining an organisation.

What drives perceptions of Gen Y is what also drives all other generations.

Our colleagues did one more test. A stepwise regression was done to identify the ‘key drivers’ for different age groups. From the Trust Index survey instrument administered by Great Place to Work on employees of over 400 organizations in India, one of the statements “Taking everything into consideration this is a great place to work”, often referred to as the outcome statement, was taken as the dependent variable. This was done for the entire sample across all age groups and also done for specific age groups. The R square for all the models were above 0.7 (considered highly acceptable in social science research)

The above regression analysis helped us determine the ‘key drivers’, i.e., the other items in our survey that has a higher co-relation and a higher impact on the overall employee perception measured by the statement, “Taking everything into consideration this is a great place to work”.

Four out of the top five key drivers are the same across all age groups! They are:

• Pride in being a part of the organisation
• Career growth opportunities
• Fair performance evaluation
• Family or team feeling

What drives perceptions of Gen Y are the same things that drive perceptions of other generations. Even a Baby Boomer is seeking growth opportunities!

Best employers have higher engagement for most generations, not just Gen Y Do the best employers have higher engagement for Gen Y compared to other generations? An analysis of employee perceptions and people practices of the best workplaces show that a vast majority (more than 80 per cent) do a great job of engaging all generations, not just one. Our team could categorise the best workplaces in to three categories.

Engagement levels of different generations	Top 100 Best Workplaces in India
Category A- Gen Y more engaged than older generations	4 per cent
Category B – All equally engaged	80 per cent
Category C- Gen Y less engaged than other generations	16 percent

Note: Fisher’s test was used to determine if the difference in engagement scores between different generations is statistically significant. Engagement levels measured in terms of average scores in our Trust Index employee survey

Not only do the majority of the best workplaces do a good job in engaging all generations, by doing so, they produce higher employee engagement scores than the other two categories.

The reality is, perhaps, that we as managers would love to categorise our employees into neat categories – Gen Y, Gen X, Baby Boomers etc. The alternative is to do the hard work of understanding the diversity that exists among people and building an inclusive culture that is able to bring the best out of most people.

The Generation Y is not the same across cities, industries, socio-economic strata and cultures. But the good news is that there are common engagement drivers for most people and we know what these are. To the manager who says that Generation Y is independent, likes flexibility, wants a higher purpose, requires frequent feedback and is impatient, my response would be that maybe that is exactly what we were at that age, except that the opportunities in the market place may not have enabled us to display these traits in a manner that young people can do today.

Author: Prasenjit Bhattacharya

About the Author

Prasenjit Bhattacharya is the CEO of Great Place to Work Institute, India and a Director at Great Place to Work Institute, Sri Lanka. He is an MA in PM IR from TISS batch of 1989-91. Views expressed are personal. The above article is based on data collected in 2014-15 by Great Place to Work Institute, India. Prasenjit can be contacted at [email protected]