Harnessing Generation Y’s potential

A feature I’d been working on for a couple of weeks appeared in yesterday’s Sunday Business Post recruitment section, which  looked at how companies can best attract and motivate staff under 30 – known as either ‘millenials’ or ‘Generation Y’.

It came out of recent research by PwC entitled Managing Tomorrow’s People, and included a chat with Mark Carter, a partner with PwC Ireland human resources services:

‘‘Generational categorisations can be risky at times, but the surveys suggest that the millenial generation people are somewhat different. They have high expectations of what employers will do for them, as opposed to what they can do for their employer. That doesn’t mean they do not want to work hard, but they want to work in a different way,” said Carter.

I also spoke with Sandra McDevitt, head of people operations for Google in Ireland and Fiona Mullen, head of HR at Microsoft Ireland, for the piece.

‘‘It can sound a bit wacky, but we look to recruit people who are ‘Googley’,” said McDevitt. “The big thing for us is – can these people work collaboratively in a very fast-paced, rapidly changing workplace environment and who have the smarts to solve problems creatively?”

‘‘Unpaid leave of absence can be very important for our younger employees, so that they can go and gain some other experiences, such as travelling abroad,” said Mullen. “We also offer three-day volunteering opportunities to all of our employees, which are very highly valued by our graduate population.”

More thinking outside the box in the full piece through here on the SBP site.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites