Weekly Wrap-Up, April 13, 2007

Employee Evolution has been up and running now for little over a month. In that time, we've been lucky enough to receive mass amounts of support from not only Millennials, but from Boomers and X-ers in the blogosphere. I'd especially like to thank Penelope Trunk at Brazen Careerist for giving us the weekly Twenty-Something slot on her site every Monday. Keep an eye out for the next addition as you head back to work next week.

As I look back at some of the first blogs we've posted, I couldn't help but notice our three initial goals:

1) Confirm our belief that the current corporate system is antiquated and the vast majority of Millennial workers will not simply adapt.

2) Educate our Millennial peers in the workforce and those soon to enter the workforce about the current explosion of information regarding our generation's extremely different attitudes about work.

3) Create an anonymous dialogue between our generation and the corporations struggling to understand our attitudes about work.

Call me an optimist, but for a month's worth of effort, I'd say we had some tremendous success. The dialogue between our writers and readers has been phenomenal, we've uncovered some fascinating information and even a few corporations have taken notice. Not too bad for two guys with an idea and very limited resources, right? I guess it just goes to show how technology opens up so many doors and the world is truly becoming a much smaller place.

Looking forward, I can see two things happening with Employee Evolution:

1) We remain unchanged sustaining our steady readership with little escalation toward our grand objective.

2) We continue to take things to the next level, gain a great audience day-by-day and truly have an influence in the way we work.

The second outcome depends highly on our commitment to the cause, and to that end, we whole-heartedly swear our allegiance. But there's a second factor that's just as important in an active movement, its followers…

We have some great readers who challenge us to think every day with there intellectual thought and we thank you for that. If we didn't have you, then what the hell are we even doing? We hope that as we continue to write, you continue to read, and we encourage you to tell others to read too. To take this idea above and beyond what we initially hoped it would be, it's going to take an army. So if nothing else, send our link to people you know – a peer at work, a friend from school or even a parent who might have an interesting take on what we discuss. Once we've planted those thousands of seeds, we'll have the strength of numbers that will take us to the mainstream where our voices can't be ignored.

Thanks again for your continued support! See you on Monday.

Companies Need Millennials, and Text Message Recruiting is Dumb

I recently read an interesting article by Michael Kane from the
New York Post about the high demand of college seniors and the new tactics employers are using to recruit them. I am just less than a year removed from being a college senior, so this article was of particular interest to me.

The first few stats discuss the amount of baby boomers leaving the work force (85 million) and the amount of Gen Xers (50 million) who because of sheer numbers will not be able to fill the amount of open positions. Obviously, this means that young workers are at an all time premium. Here's a shocker, we already know this. Its simple math 85 million job openings minus 50 million people to fill them leaves 35 million unfilled jobs just waiting to be taken over by driven millennials. To say the least, this is a pretty cool time to be a recent or soon to be college graduate.

As you delve deeper into the article, Mr. Kane describes new methods of recruiting that companies are using to attract young people. Some of the methods he describes include:

1. Setting up corporate MySpace and Facebook Pages

2. Personalized Web Pages

3. International Exchange Programs

Each of these methods seem reasonable in theory, the International Exchange Programs especially peaked my interest. However, he goes on to discuss Travelers Insurance as leading the way in sending text messages to recruit college students. Now I'm not sure what caliber of candidate Travelers Insurance is looking for, but to me this idea is absolutely ridiculous. The company comes across as sounding terribly desperate to find any employee who can work a cell phone.

There is an unspoken rule about text messages that Travelers Insurance must be unaware of. To me, Texts are more personal than emails or phone calls. The only people I text message are my girlfriend, my brother and my close friends. Texts are short, to the point messages that can only be understood by someone who knows the personality behind the abbreviated words. I immediately delete those stupid Verizon advertisements that end up in my inbox. After a quick laugh, these recruiting texts would be deleted as well.

The article goes on to say that these personalized text messages.target young people and play into our need to feel special. Sorry Travelers Insurance, these mass text messages will not make us feel special, rather they will make us feel like targets in a recruiting scam by a desperate company. By the way, this whole need to feel special thing is getting on my nerves. Regardless of whether or not we need to feel special, the statistics show that companies have to start one upping each other to get the top talent, and like I said before, my peers and I are well aware of this.

I will not completely dismiss the role of text messaging in recruiting young people. If I have already come in to your office for an interview, met with you face to face and formed some type of personal bond, a casual text wishing me good luck with my job search would be fine. This is not something I would expect or even want for that matter, but if you are insistent on using text messages as a recruiting tool, this is the route to take. Skip the BS text message job advertisements, play into our need for a team oriented, friendly work environment and your text message recruiting MIGHT work.

Getting Beyond Cubicle Hell

Over the centuries humankind has adapted to all kinds of environments and climates. As our surroundings evolve, so do we. Eskimos adjusted to arctic conditions by building igloos and hunting in sealskin canoes. In Los Angeles, where the weather is perfect, people have decided they need to be perfect, too, and survive on green-tea hand lotion and Botox injections. For thirteen hundred years the residents of Inuyama, Japan, have provided for their families with ukai, a traditional style of river fishing that utilizes cormorants on leashes. Nevertheless, despite its impressive history, the human race has had difficulty harmonizing with the proliferation of cubicle environments.

The Cubicle Survival Guide by James F. Thompson

Of all the daily torments I face at the office none is more hellish than the isolated gray, felt walls of my cubicle. Every morning I enter the building, my legs laggardly thrusting me forward, and I take one final breath before sitting in the same chair, in the same cube, in the same sector, of the same flawlessly symmetric structure that is home to my daily routine. Some people seem to find solace in the habitual nature of the traditional office setting, but I am not one of them.

This whole dilemma has got me perplexed. How is this the best way to go about your day? Throughout my high school and college career, work was something most frequently done in a communal environment. Whether a library, a study hall, or a cafeteria, this is where the science of momentum was seen at its finest. Productivity always seemed to give birth to more productivity, it's how the majority of my peers seemed to get their work done, and we were interacting as the social beings we are at the same time.

So why, as I step into the next big phase of life, is the system set up to counteract my inherent nature to be involved in a social environment while I work? Is it a generational thing? Do X-ers, Boomers, and all of the above thrive in an atmosphere of seclusion? Or is this something that should have evolved a long time ago? If the cube is an approach that has actually inspired people to take their work above and beyond in the past, some upgrades need to be made to accommodate the team-oriented atmosphere of the Millennial generation.

The utter scheme of dividing people into separate boxes screams insanity to a person who has grown up in a productive social atmosphere. For myself, it even goes as far as to spawn depression. And why would it not? Isolation is definitely grounds for a slue of anxiety issues to come during the course of your life.

What are some alternatives to the typical distribution of bodies in the workplace? One suggestion is the concept of "hoteling," a work environment with non-dedicated spaces communally shared by employees. It's almost like going back to high school (without the teenage drama), you get a locker to house all of your supplies and you go about your daily routine without the constraint of assigned seating. I'm skeptical of this approach, but if several global companies – including IBM, American Express, and Microsoft – have already adopted this method to some degree, than who is to say it can't work at your office?

My solution is a lot easier, and it caters to certain individual needs for personal space. Hack down the top half of people's cubes so people can actually look each other in the eye when they're having a conversation. Where I work, administrative assistants already have this luxury so they can communicate to their boss, but I need to talk to my coworkers too!

Presently, I can already see work environments changing for the better. Sadly, I'm still sitting in an outdated environment, but with the right amount of change taking place with our competitors, hopefully the bigwigs will take notice, and make some amendments themselves.

Shedding Some Light on the Blended Life

First off, I am absolutely amazed at the amount of conversation that my "I Don't Want Work/Life Balance" post on The Brazen Careerist has caused. A lot of comments were positive and many people liked the phrase. Some people disagreed with the "blended" concept, but the majority were supportive, which I truly appreciate.

I'm writing this brief follow-up post because I believe that somewhere along the way; my words were lost in translation. Many recent comments talk about needing to balance work and life in order to keep sane and not become a workaholic. If you read over my post, you will notice that not once do I suggest that I live to work or work around the clock. In fact, I probably don't spend as much time as I could on my work because so much of my day is devoted to blogging and keeping up my website.

Some people assumed that because I discuss incorporating work into my life that I must be a power hungry, success driven human being. What I am really trying to convey with this blended life idea is that work should be a part of my life not a separate entity. Work is no more important then any other aspect of my life. How can I achieve a blended life if I am working around the clock?

One comment that I absolutely loved was from Erik Mazzone, he said, "I think a key part of the approach you wrote about, and it's a smart one in my opinion, is the sense of fluidly moving between work and non work tasks."

This is exactly what I was trying to convey. There is no need to work while you are at you kids soccer game or out at night with friends, but there is no reason you can't transition from work in the morning to the soccer game in the afternoon and back to work at night without worrying whether something is a "work" task or a "life" task. Every day is different, some will be busier than others, but life takes place at all hours of the day, not just after work and on the weekends.

Brad Maier wrote a post on his blog further clarifying my blended life comments. He stresses that multitasking is not blending and that it is perfectly acceptable to make your schedule fit your needs. These are two important concepts in a blended life. If you are constantly multitasking or thinking about work, then in reality you will constantly be working, defeating the entire purpose of a blended life. Moreover, making your schedule fit your needs is not a novel concept like Brad says, but if you want this flexibility then sometimes you have to be prepared to send out a few emails or finish up an important presentation late at night.

If you think that living a blended life means you are constantly working and stressing out about your job, you are probably still thinking of work and life as a constant tug of war. If you are doing something you love then why can't they be one and the same? The goal of a blended life is not living to work and its not working to live. The goal is to have a life.

Today's Work Ethic is a New Work Ethic

As a precursor to this post, I recommend checking out "Today's work ethic just no longer works," a piece found in the March 25 edition of The Boston Globe.

"The work ethic is dead!" I killed it! But I can't take all the credit. If you classify yourself as a Millennial you're also a culprit.

According to Dale Dauten, a syndicated columnist for The Boston Globe, the Millennial view of work is nothing more than "something to do with your hands while chatting on your cell phone…unless it's something to do with your mouth while text messaging."

My initial reaction to this absolute rant was to ignore it. People say stupid things every day. If I replied to every unsupported remark someone wrote I'd have premature Carpal Tunnel by the end of the week. But wait…isn't this guy writing for a reputable newspaper?

That right there just "grinds my gears." Can anyone write anything about my generation and get away with it? On the Internet, okay. In a newspaper, this has to be a joke.

Our friend over on Generations@Work said it best: "Just make the accusation, somebody will believe it. If you repeat a lie or a rumor often enough, it becomes the truth. Gee, where have we seen this before?"

Where have we seen this before? Basically in any situation throughout history where someone felt fear, and in that fear decided to fabricate a story that reinforces his reasoning to be scared. Dauten's only problem is, he's not very good at it. Good propaganda at least has some sort of backward research associated with its purpose.

By the end of this three-paragraph delusion, Dauten actually pointed out something very essential to being recognized in the business, a "Contribution Ethic." He's got something there, but a half of a page worth of proving nothing followed by an epiphany doesn't qualify any advice giving.

Below I highlight a few elements of Dauten's "Contribution Ethic" Top Ten and provide a little insight on how the Millennials will play into this model.

1. Just help. Make yourself useful. You aren't just there, waiting. There's no waiting. Just help.

Sometimes that's easier said than done. Maybe back in the day it was easy to get involved without a little "how-to" guidance, but the world has changed. Business is bigger, faster and overwhelming for an entry-level. The truth is, some of us are just waiting. We're trying to keep busy, but unless managers can take some time out to immerse us into the culture, we won't seem like we're worth our salaries.

3. Your half is 60 percent.

That's just not the way we see things. There's no halves, or thirds, or divisions of any kind in the mind of a Millennial. We're team players. Our half is 100 percent, or even better 110 percent. Doing our 60 percent is not what we consider being done. We're done when our team is done.

4. Innovation is a subversive activity. You can't expect management and/or co-workers to drool with excitement over your "I have an idea!" After all, most ideas are suggestions and most suggestions are complaints. On the other hand, if an idea is truly original, then expect resistance; indeed, welcome it as a measure of originality. Organizations are built for continuity not creativity. That's why you need to demonstrate how the idea will work, and you might need the guerrilla's wiles. Ideas are nothing next to proposals; proposals are nothing next to experiments.

The only problem I have here is relating ideas to complaints. I carry a notebook, and I write down every stupid idea that comes into my head. When I forget my notebook, I beat myself up over it. I don't care if the idea never gets recognized, but here's my philosophy: "In every stupid idea, there's a great idea. And in every great idea, there's a millionaire." So maybe every once in awhile managers might want to take a fresh look at things and hear what their entry-levels have to say. I've said it before – what do you have to lose?

5. Giving time without attention is a gift-wrapped empty box.

Touché…which is why if you want to rant about someone's generation, you better give some attention to the research.

That Millennial lackey sitting in the cube across from you chatting on his cell phone and updating his profile on MySpace doesn't represent our generation. That "Johnny," as Dauten would, call him, is nothing more than the irregularity that all generations face - the one without a clue.

Furthermore, we're not "Johnnies" or "Janies" for that matter. We're Millennials, and to describe us so typically is just an insult to what I believe is a generation with limitless potential.