It’s graduation time! My little sister graduated from high school this year, and she managed to make my brother and me look bad while she did it. She was awarded a full-ride NROTC scholarship and graduated as the class salutitorian with a 4.22 GPA. She has been involved in sports, and she works a part-time job at a shoe store. Very impressive!

And while she’s out enjoying graduation party after graduation party, I wonder if her bosses are taking steps to be ready to replace her when she takes off for the East Coast at the end of the summer. Because if they aren’t, they’re going to be in a spot at the beginning of the fall. And this isn’t just fraternal pride speaking - this is an issue everyone who employs young people should be thinking about right now. (OK, there is definitely some pride involved.)

As your employees who finished their senior year begin to enter the real world, college, or whatever it is they plan to do, one thing is certain: their major life changes will also be translating into changes for you. The end of the summer will bring with it the loss of some talent, the advancement of other talent, and the need to find new talent.

I suggest asking yourself these questions long before the end of the summer. In fact, you should probably have started thinking about these issues already.

1. Who is staying and who is going?

Some of your recent graduates will be going to school out-of-state. Some will be seeking other employment. Some will be staying with you. You need to start asking your young staff what their plans are right now so you can set yourself up for success accordingly.

2. What will I do with the people who stay?

You might learn that some of your great part-time employees are thinking of coming on full-time. Hooray! Start thinking about the steps you want to take to develop them, and then get them engaged immediately!  This is important because a job that seemed fun for 15 hours per week can get dreary when move up to 40 hours per week. Especially when your school social life is no longer providing stimulation and excitement. Believe me - I’ve been there.

You may also find out that one of your less-than-stellar employees is interested in staying and is even considering trying to work more often. You should look very carefully at whether or not you want to provide more work, more responsibilities, or even keep someone who isn’t impressing you. Don’t allow yourself to think that someone you can barely stand will magically improve with more hours and a freshly printed diploma.

3. How will I replace the people who are leaving?

Odds are pretty good that some of your performers are leaving for school or other jobs. You’re going to be in the position to replace them, and now is the time to start work on that process. You should already have some sort of recruiting practices in line so that you can keep finding fresh talent, and right now the only difference is that you’ve got more than two weeks of notice that some of your best will be departing. If you finish your recruiting before school starts, you’ll have the opportunity to have your new people bought-in, trained, and producing before fall arrives with its craziness.

By dealing with these issues now, you’ll be able to create a much less stressful fall for yourself.

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(I know that times are tough and can see the rationale behind a pay freeze, but I’m not entirely willing to concede that accepting new responsibilities and receiving compensation for that violates the idea behind a pay freeze. But that’s a semantic question for another day.)

The problem I’m more interested in addressing came up when my friend balked at the idea of accepting a bunch of new responsibilities and exactly zero new pay. His bosses told him that it would show that he was a company man. They said it would help him build credibility within the company.

This wasn’t the first friend I’ve ever seen go through this. Another of my friends was asked to put in a few eighty hour weeks on a special assignment without any additional recompense. His bosses told him that he was building “name leverage” or some kind of stupid non-tangible concept like it. He asked them point blank: “Can I buy food with name leverage?” Of course not. He knew it and they knew it.

What I want to know is if this is a a tactic that is used only with young people, or if they try to throw this kind of crap at older employees, too?

I’ve never heard of and simply can’t imagine someone saying this to a 50-year-old manager:

“Bob, you’ve been with us for twenty years, and we were hoping that you could take a bit more time away from the kids, because we know you’re working to provide for them and they’d definitely be benefited if you had a bit more name leverage.”

You know what that kind of request says to me: “We own you, and you’re too young to know any better, so bend over and get used to it.”

My response to that sentiment is to write my resume and start sending that bad boy out. If you won’t pay me more to accept extra responsibilities, someone else will. Moreover, it’s insulting that you’re constantly cramming  productivity down my throat as the reason I can’t have a raise, and then when you ask me to step into a more productive position, you still tell me I can’t have a raise. Even more so given that I get the feeling you’re just trying to put this one over me since I’m relatively inexperienced.

Am I completely off base here? Is this something that managers only use with young employees, or is “name leverage” some kind of currency offered to people of any age but accepted by exactly zero retailers of repute (or ill repute, for that matter)?

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Why?

As we were walking out the door, one of the managers walked up to me and a couple of my co-workers and said, “I need you to help me move all this stuff.”

Let me back up about two and a half hours to 7:00 pm, when there was no one in the store. No one. Seems like a good time to be moving stuff, right? Well, that’s what we thought, too, but the first we heard of it was at 9:29 pm when we tried to walk out the door. Ultimately, it took us a half hour to move all the junk.

So, you’ve got me and a few angry co-workers leaving a half hour late and missing an exciting playoff game to do something that even someone with limited foresight could have assigned two hours before, and you know what words we never heard: “Please” and “Thank you.”

I walked away from the store angry. In the first place, it was complete BS that we were required to help with this when it wasn’t our fault that the manager responsible didn’t bother to communicate the issue to the earlier staff in the day. That we had to miss the small bit of the game that we were counting on seeing rubbed salt in the wound. And to not even get the basic courtesy of a “please” or “thank you” just added insult to injury.

I understand that there are times when I’ll be called upon to do something extra. I get it. It’s a dynamic world, and if you can’t roll with it you’ll be left behind. I can handle that, and I can handle pitching in in unexpected ways at unexpected times.

• What I can’t handle is being treated like solving the problems your poor planning created is somehow a part of my job.
• What I can’t handle is being treated like someone who didn’t have anything better to be doing.
• What I can’t handle is not even getting the slightest bit of recognition that what I did was above and beyond the call of duty and made a significant difference in your night.

If you look, you’ll find that more often than not your Generation Y employees are willing to go the extra mile if it’s needed. But if you don’t recognize that they’re doing something extra, or at the very least ask them politely for their help on some above-and-beyond task, they won’t go the extra mile for you. Instead, they’ll go down the block and get work with someone who will recognize their efforts.

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Later that day, my manager and I were having a discussion, and he said, “I thought it was a great idea when they moved me to a salaried position. But this week I’m going to make about $7.00/hour. Welcome to management and the sixty hour work week!” He was smiling when he said it, but you could see that he died a little inside every time he thought about it.

I saw these exact same scenarios play out in restaurant work, too.

So here’s the punchline: Seeing these interactions kills any ambition I might have to advance into those positions.

Sure, a salary is nice in the sense that it’s guaranteed money. But if it comes at the expense of being told that putting in a 9 hour day isn’t enough or working for a wage that gets smaller each hour of the week, it’s not even remotely worth it.

As an hourly employee, I knew I wouldn’t be in for more than 40 hours in a given week, lest some unfortunate manager get a tongue lashing for allowing me five minutes of overtime. What’s more, I knew that if I left at the time I was scheduled to leave, no one was going to get bent out of shape.

I have no idea why companies continue to think that moving into management requires a level of “commitment” that involves sacrificing any attempt at a day-to-day life outside of work, accepting a continually decreasing wage, and basically being willing to think of the health of the business as the single most important aspect of your entire life.

What I can see is why there are so many unhappy young managers out there.

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1. The people I worked with were awesome. I would have been out the door a dozen times if it weren’t for the fact that I was working with people I enjoyed being around, who supported me, developed me, and related to me. My peers and my supervisors were both important contributors in this regard. To give you an idea of what a large role the people I worked with played for me: To this day, I still hang out on a regular basis with people who I worked with there.

2. My schedule was flexible. Flexibility was incredibly important to my work schedule, and it still is. In a given week in high school, I might have a family obligation, a sports event, practice most afternoons, some sort of homework or exam to prepare for, and a couple work shifts for which I was scheduled. Oh, and I was sort of interested in having a life, too. So, if there was a concert I wanted to attend, for instance, I was able to work that out with the boss. That flexibility kept me there because it meant that (a) I could accomplish the things I wanted to and (b) my boss didn’t make me feel like my job was a part of my goals, instead of an obstacle to accomplishing them.

3. I was recognized for what I did well. Without trying to brag (OK, maybe just a bit), I managed to pull in a couple awards, a couple special assignments, a promotion, and a number of complimentary reviews that were coupled with pay increases. I knew that what I accomplished there was making a difference to the company, and that the difference I was making would be rewarded.

4. I got to eat for free. I can’t stress this one enough: Starving student + Free food = Match made in Heaven.

So, those are four reasons I stayed with one employer for a long time.

Ask your long-term employees why they’ve hung around for so long, then work to create those kind of perks for all of your employees.

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If your mind isn’t already boggled, allow me to put this in a little perspective

• This man worked at his job for 2.7 times longer than I have been alive.

• I have held seven jobs since my sophomore year of high school, not counting odd work done here and there for a day or two.

So, that kind of loyalty is really a monumental achievement.

One response to this story that I found interesting was a commenter on Eric’s post who said:

“Amazing and we have to deal with people who will quit if they don’t get saturday off for a concert.”

That’s some beat-down brutality right there! Some young people just got put in their place.

Or did they?

People respond to incentives. It’s a basic tenet of economics because it’s a basic fact of life. And let’s face it, my generation simply doesn’t have very many incentives to stay somewhere for a long time. Especially if that somewhere isn’t fitting into the overall scheme of our lives. Pensions and retirement plans have gone the way of the dodo. I don’t even expect to ever have post-employment benefits.

In fact, the only incentive at any job I’ve held that was designed specifically to reward staying for a long-term that I can even think of  is eligibility to earn vacation hours after a year working. But let’s consider if this is really an incentive. Let’s assume I make $8.00/hr, and that I work 25 hours per week. If, after a year of work, I am eligible to begin earning vacation hours at the rate of two weeks per year, that means that after my first two years at that job, my incentive for staying for two years is $400. (I have earned two 25  hour weeks worth of pay at $8.00/hr, or $400.) Assuming I work 50 weeks per year, a different employer would only have to offer me a $0.32/hour raise to match that reward in half the time. So, let’s stop pretending that a sixteen year old kid working in a restaurant for some spare cash before he goes to college is going to commit to you because you have a vacation package that the guy down the street can double with $0.32.

This just illustrates what you already know: the business world has changed from the days when the financial resources existed to create the kinds of long-term benefits that would keep an employee for 20 or 30 years. I’m fine with that. It’s the world I grew up in, and I’ve never known it another way. What that means on the employer side of the equation is that to keep me for a long term, employers will have to earn my loyalty somehow.

You might be thinking that “loyalty” isn’t the right word here, and that a word like “commitment” might be better. After all, if your loyalty can be purchased, it isn’t loyalty at all. So, allow me to further clarify the question I’ll be addressing in my next post: If you don’t have enough money to purchase someone’s commitment, what can you do to earn his loyalty?

With that said, I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether or not Generation Y received a legitimate flogging from the comment.

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1. Explicit admissions of being checked out.

“Dude, I am so checked out.” Most folks won’t simply say this to their boss. It’s more likely to overhear it. But that doesn’t mean some people won’t just say it to your face. I suggest getting rid of those people.

2. Decreased attention to detail.

Sandwiches were supposed to be made with three tomatoes. This is for taste and food cost. I cared deeply about this. Until I had turned in my two weeks’ notice. At that point, I rewrote the spec: “Sandwiches should be made with as many tomatoes as I find it convenient to grab.” While this is likely inevitable for people who have turned in their notice, it’s something you should be weary of in employees who claim that they intend to hang around.

3. Sudden apathy toward customer interactions

Despite everything you may have heard, most young employees care about doing a good job. So, when customers are unhappy with the job we’ve done (or worse yet are making it very clear that this is the case), we tend to be annoyed by it. Part of it is that we’re pretty certain we’re good at our jobs. Sure, the customer is always right, but that doesn’t mean he has any idea what’s going on. So, when he puts on airs of knowledge, this can be very frustrating. Unless, of course, you’re completely checked out. Then, you just give difficult customers a 1,000 yard stare and eventually they’ll stop bothering you.

4. Newly Iffy Attendance Habits

If an employee was once the most punctual and dependable of people and he quite suddenly develops problems with his attendance, it’s very possible that he has checked out. Punctuality, at the barest minimum, is a young employee’s way of keeping bosses from harassing him. If he no longer cares enough even to prevent that, odds are good he doesn’t care about your bottom line either.

5. A startling combination of the preceding factors

Any of the above on its own could be an indication of something else. For instance, someone who has adopted a live-and-let-live approach to customer interactions might not get frustrated when someone accuses him of incompetence. An employee might suddenly be late frequently if his bus route is changed. But if you start noticing a number of these together, you’re getting a lot of data that suggests it may be time for you and this checked-out employee to part amicably to avoid a less pleasant departure in the future.

I’m curious:

Managers: What is the worst way you ever had an employee quit? Leave a comment or send me an e-mail (tj@generationwhy.com).

Employees: Tell me about your worst departure from an employer.

I don’t really like horror, but these stories can be fun to hear.

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WAITER: Good evening, sir. What can we get for you?

ROTUND CUSTOMER: I’d like the 16 oz. steak with fries, a soda, and a baked potato.

WAITER: No. I won’t do that. You’re too fat already. I can’t imagine what it would do to your cholesterol.

ROTUND CUSTOMER: What!?

WAITER: Yeah, actually, the only thing I’d be willing to serve you is a salad and some ice water.

ROTUND CUSTOMER: Well, I have never -

WAITER: It’s for your own good, sir.

The morals of the story?

1. Unhappy employees can cause serious damage.

No doubt, this customer was offended. And rightfully so. Given  the speed with which news can travel, the restaurant proved lucky that this didn’t end up as a chain e-mail. Or, worse yet, a viral video produced by the employee.

2. Someone has to clean up the messes unhappy employees make. That someone is you.

Can you imagine trying to deal with this customer having just witnessed this interaction and knowing that you aren’t wearing kevlar?

3.  Either of two things could have prevented this from happening:

a. Keeping this employee happy.

Whether it was through bonuses, better scheduling, personal attention, or whatever it was this employee needed but wasn’t getting (asking is a good way to find out if you’re unsure), someone could have kept him happy enough that he would, at the bare minimum, quit in the traditional way.

b. Firing his happy ass.

After realizing just how checked out he was, someone should have gotten rid of this particular employee. Employees throw off all kinds of signals that they no longer care. In my next post, I’ll be looking at some of those behaviors.

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