Op-Ed Contributors

Managers need new style for the youth

By Wang Shaohui (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-12-29 08:00

Many young employees are planning to change jobs as the New Year approaches. Though frequent job-hopping may have something to do with young people's attitude toward work, it also reflects the reality of the rapidly changing social economy. The difference in values that managers and young employees believe in is an important factor, too.

The above factors have prompted some managers to refer to young employees as "the lost generation", a stigmata that is offensive. Rather than using a derisive term to describe all young employees, such managers should try to improve their management skills by making efforts to understand the younger generation's mindset.

According to official figures, the number of people born in the 1980s in China is about 204 million. Assuming that the average graduate starts working at the age of 22, people born in the 1980s comprise a big part of the workforce today. Also, many of the people born in the early 1990s have become part of the workforce in the country's manufacturing sector.

These young people share some common features. Since most of them are the only children of their families, they are more or less "spoiled" by their parents. Besides, they were born after China launched its reform and opening-up so they acquired knowledge about enterprises and commercial society at an early age and are adept at the use of the Internet, which gives them access to information from varied sources. All these have made the younger generation more self-centered and flexible in its economic pursuit.

But like every other generation, today's young employees have their advantages and disadvantages . Their flexibility prompts them to hop from one job to another and increase their income substantially, but frequent changes of jobs can also make them less steady and leave them without enough experience to rise to the top in their particular fields.

On the other hand, most of the supervisors of these young employees were born in the 1950s and 1960s, and follow the ways of their previous generation. Their authoritarian management style is in stark contrast to the strong individualism of the younger generation.

Many of the new-generation employees put emphasis on personal goals and are not willing to sacrifice their self-interests to help achieve their employers' goals. In contrast, the 1950s- and 1960s-born managers advocate values that serve the objectives of the organizations they work for, which may not necessarily be to the advantage of employees at large. The frequency with which certain problems have been occurring in some companies, including extreme cases such as suicides by some employees, can be largely attributed to the strict management rules and the neglect of young employees' demands.