Saturday, November 08, 2008
When Trophy Kids Go to Work
Parents who spoiled their kids growing up are now surprised how "entitled" these same kids seem to be as employees? The price employers will pay for what many parents and teachers did to carrot-and-stick their kids to "do what they told them to do" might challenge the workplace. That's according to Ron Alsop, a contributor to The Wall Street Journal and author of The Trophy Kids Grow Up: How the Millennial Generation Is Shaking Up the Workplace.
Apparently, managers are starting to see how many Millennials "flounder without precise guidelines, but thrive in structured situations that provide clearly defined rules." Perhaps that's because kids born between 1980-2000 have always been told "what to do and when to do it?" Let's face it, there's little time to "figure things out for yourself" when you're being shuttled from one adult-led activity to the next as a child growing up.
Imagine what your attitude would be growing up with most of your time spent as a student mainly being motivated with carrot-and-stick incentives-and-threats? So much for developing self-motivation. Upon graduating into the workforce would it be a surprise that you would respond to any given task with: "What will I get if I do?" and "What will you do if I don't?"
To his credit, Ron does admit that "in the final analysis, the generational tension is a bit ironic. After all, the grumbling baby-boomer managers are the same indulgent parents who produced the millennial generation."
Posted by Fran Kick at 5:01:46 AM in Kids @ Work (6)
Friday, August 29, 2008
Deloitte Decodes GenXers + Millennials
Deloitte is a major employer of young adults. In fact, over 80% of their employees who work directly with clients are under the age of 35. As such, Deloitte actively engaged in addressing the topic of generations at work and freely shares their findings with others outside of Deloitte.
Listen to this special Career Connections edition of Total Picture Radio. Peter Clayton shares a thoughtful interview with Stan Smith, national director of Next Generation Initiatives (NGI) at Deloitte LLP. Stan's responsibility is to study demographic and workforce attitude trends with the purpose of coming up with practical ways to deal with their impact on businesses. He is the author of the book entitled Decoding Generational Differences: Fact, fiction... or should we just get back to work?
Podcast with Stan Smith, Principal, National Director, Next Generation Initiatives Talent, Deloitte LLP:
http://www.totalpicture.com/content/view/556/214/
Download and read Stan Smith's book Decoding Generational Differences: Fact, fiction ...or should we just get back to work?
http://www.deloitte.com/dtt/cda/doc/content/us_Talent_DecodingGenerationalDifferences.pdf
Posted by Fran Kick at 12:10:40 PM in Kids @ Work (6)
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Summer Job Searching Starts KICKin'
The number of students in the labor force (ages 16- to 24-years-old) grows sharply starting in April each year. Now might be the prefect time to encourage kids to start KICKin' IT IN on the summer job search. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, last summer the youth labor workforce grew by 2.9 million to a total of 24.3 million in July 2007.
While some predict the 2008 summer job outlook for teens won't be impossible, they do caution that kids will have to work to find work. Want to get a jump on the large numbers of high school and college students searching for summer jobs? Check out these suggestions, resources and articles from SnagAJob, Teens4Hire and Young Jobs.
BTW, if you'll be hiring students this summer, you might want to beat the rush too. That is if you want the best-of-the-best kind of kids KICKin' IT IN for you this summer. FYI, here are the top-ten industries employing kids in the summer:
Posted by Fran Kick at 11:25:09 AM in Kids @ Work (6)
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Jack Welch says 'kids these days' KICK!
Even Jack and Suzy Welch don't get it. That is, they admit that they don't know why everyone is so down on 'kids these days' – a.k.a. the Millennials (or GenY as they and others call them).
Watch this online video podcast episode from BusinessWeek, The Welch Way, as Jack and Suzy Welch share how they see the current crop of twentysomethings, who are now breaking into the business world, as being one of the most energized and exciting group of "kids" they've ever seen. And they've certainly seen them a lot of them over the past several years, visiting dozens of campuses, teaching in two different MBA programs, consulting for companies that employ thousands of so-called GenYers, (even though FYI kids dislike that term). Overwhelmingly, they say they have found the generation of kids entering the workforce today are "hardworking, entrepreneurial, startlingly authentic, refreshingly candid, and wonderfully upbeat."
They offer two reasons 'Why Gen Y gets such a bad rap?' The first they suggest is "the age-old human propensity to worry about the wayward values of "kids these days." Your grandparents worried about your parents, who worried about you, and someday your kids will worry about theirs." In the first book of our series What Makes Kids KICK, Chapter Two details this (as well as the generational naming issues with kids born between 1980 and 2000).
The second reason is something they call "trend inflation." They suggest that with "the explosion of media outlets in every form, all of them needing content, there has emerged a relentless parade of so-called cultural phenomena backed up by little more than the vague phrase, 'experts say.'" Everything from stories about the "growing" trends of weddings on Thursdays, pets coming to work, and people making "life lists" to keep track of the things they want to do before they die. While they admit, "surely, there is some truth in all of these reports, but some truth does not necessarily constitute reality."
Bravo! Well worth reading and listening and watching all thanks to BusinessWeek.
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Kids working after school and on weekends
The youth labor workforce always shifts a bit once school starts. According to Teenage Research Unlimited, 11 percent of kids 12-15 are working at some sort of regular paid job, 35 percent of 16-17 year olds and 53 percent of 18-19 year olds are working.
Rather than contributing to their “family income,” today’s typical student is likely to find that most or all of his/her earnings are available for discretionary spending. The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data showed that youth in lower income households tend to work less than do those in households with higher income. Given that some are earning $200 a month, some kids today experience what Jerald Bachman calls “premature affluence.”
Dr. Buchman is a Research Professor and Distinguished Research Scientist at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research and has served as a principal investigator on the Monitoring the Future study ever since its inception in 1975. He suggests it’s affluence because “$200 or more per month represents a lot of ‘spending money’ for a high school student, and premature because many of these individuals will not be able to sustain that level of discretionary spending once they have to take on the burdens of paying for their own necessities.” It’s a development of spending style that teens can’t maintain as they move into emerging adulthood. Once they’re on their own, away from the financial base of mom and/or dad, emerging adults have to unlearn the bad spending habits they acquired as teens. Plus, working too many hours after school can endanger their academic performance as well as school- and community-based extracurricular activities.
Permissible and suggested work hours for kids...
Under 14 years old =
Forget working and concentrate on school, family, and other activities
14 to 15 years old =
3 hours maximum on any school day
18 hours maximum in any school week
8 hours maximum on any non-school day (by law, 6 hours maximum by smart parents)
40 hours maximum (by law, 30 hours by smart parents) in any non-sch
Posted by Fran Kick at 9:59:38 AM in Kids @ Work (6)
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Kids working: numbers up, percentage down?
The older you get, the more you work. Starting at age 12, about half of American youths engage in some type of work activity. That percentage of kids who work increases from age 14 to age 15, after that young people tend to move from freelance work – such as baby sitting and lawn mowing – into more formal, ongoing employment type jobs. By the time they finish 12th grade, the National Research Council states that 80% of youth report holding a job at some point during their high school years.
The youth labor force always grows sharply between April and July every year with high school and college students getting summer jobs. Last summer the U.S. Department of Labor reported that two-thirds of youth ages 16 to 24 were working or looking for work. However, the summertime youth employment rate (or the proportion of kids working) has actually been trending down since the early 1990s.
How does that happen? More and more kids working each summer – number of – yet a smaller and smaller percentage of youth working? Ahhh... Behold the power of generational demographics and the shear size of the Millennial Generation (born 1980-2000). Plus, with all the academic accountability being pushed during the normal school year, more and more kids are going to summer school. This increasing interest in summertime scholastic enrichment has actually resulted in a decrease in the percentage of youth working each summer since 1994 – according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Only about half of the youth enrolled in summer school were in the labor force in July last year, compared with about three-fourths of those not taking summer school.
We used to close schools in the summer so kids could go home and help out on the farm. Today we just close schools in the summer because that's what we've always done. In fact only 6 percent of the kids working in 2002 were farming. The National Consumers League even warns that agricultural field work or processing is one of the top five worst jobs for teens. Most kids end up working food service, sales/retail, handlers, equipment cleaners, helpers, and other service labor jobs.
Having to pay more and more for gas and even ketchup might motivate more high school students to get jobs this summer. The rising cost of a college education also seems to be motivating high
Posted by Fran Kick at 12:43:47 AM in Kids @ Work (6)
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