Gen Y learns a recession lesson

MY last Primespace column of the year is a good place to tie up loose ends from two topics that have generated a lot of interest in recent weeks.

MY last Primespace column of the year is a good place to tie up loose ends from two topics that have generated a lot of interest in recent weeks.

Let's start with "lessons from the recession".

Three years ago I met the head of a leading Australian law firm, who spent much of the meeting lamenting the fact that he couldn't hold on to his Generation Y staff.

Apparently he would train them and within two years they would resign and head off to London. He was at his wits end.

We discussed a range of strategies, attitudes really, on how to hang on to Generation Y staff during the economic boom.

He then fell off my radar until a month ago when we caught up at a business event. I asked how those Gen Ys were going and he smiled and took me aside.

"Bernard, remember how all those Ys were resigning and heading off to London," he said.

"Well, with the downturn they've lost their jobs, and they're sending me emails."

"Really, what are they saying?" I asked.

He smiled.

"It generally goes something along the lines of 'you may employ me now', he said.

"And I must say I'm having quite a time acquainting them with the new facts of the workplace."

And so endeth Generation Y's first lesson of the recession: Ye shall reap what ye sow.

Chopping and changing employment is just fine and dandy when the market is expanding.

But the bottom line is this: an employer isn't going to make a commitment to you in tough times if you weren't prepared to make a commitment to the employer in good times.

The lesson is that workplace concepts, such as sacrifice and perseverance, are more important than concerns about engagement and the daily need for validation.

The second issue relates to a matter I raised a month ago regarding the perfect global corporate citizen.

You may recall this concept flowed from a workshop I ran in Washington DC with a group of global human-resource directors whom I asked to collectively describe the attributes of the perfect global corporate citizen. I ran the same workshop in Singapore two weeks ago and it was more or less the same group: a collection of global human-resource directors.

But this time, they were based in Asia rather than the US or Europe, and the differences between the two workshops were revealing.

Whereas the perfect global corporate citizen in Washington was 38 to 42, in Singapore the same virtual being was 35 to 38.

And it generally fits: the business community, like the broader community, is younger in Asia than in the West.

On the issue of languages, the Washington group believed the 'corporate Lara Croft' would speak two languages but in Singapore, the unprompted response was no fewer than three languages, one of which would be English and the other Mandarin. The third language was optional.

And again it sort of fits.

Asia is a jumble of languages and cultures jammed together requiring the perfect global corporate citizen to float effortlessly between cities and understanding the nuances of various languages.

But then came the doosey.

I asked the Singapore group to outline the marital status of this mythical perfect global corporate citizen.

The unanimous answer shot back immediately from the 50 people present: this person would be single.

I thought it unusual to have a 35 to 38-year-old corporate who is single.

I pressed further: surely you mean divorced or separated?

"No," they said.

"We mean single as in never married. where never married means no partner in tow." I pressed further.

"Does this person have children from a previous union?"

"No," was the reply.

"We mean single. No partner. No kids. Not now. Not ever."

I scanned the room for dissenters but there were none.

I explained that I thought this was a bit extreme and that I needed an explanation, and this is what they said.

Apparently Asian-based global human-resource directors were well used to placing Western talent into remote locations. They said a partner, let alone kids who needed to be schooled, protected, and cosseted with other Western kids of a similar age, was a recipe for disaster.

They were especially critical of wives.

I tried to correct their language from "wives" to "partners" and they corrected me back. "No, we mean wives." (And I might add that there were more women than men in the audience. They don't seem to worry too much about political correctness in Asia.)

It transpires that a Western placement to a third-tier city in, say, the back-blocks of China results in dissatisfaction for the placement within months, if not weeks, because there is no support infrastructure for wives or children.

The whole exercise is made a lot easier if the placement doesn't have kids or wives.

The Asian response to managing global talent was different to the Washington response.

To be the perfect global citizen in an Asian-based organisation the individual needs to be young, speak multiple languages, and be prepared to offer a personal commitment to the corporation that simulates marriage. No need for a partner because partners only cause trouble.

Give yourself to the corporation instead.

It may well be that over time the values of Western and Asian global corporations will converge, especially as the scale and distribution of global talent infiltrates expanding markets.

Surely within 20 years there will be a sufficient base of Westerners in the back blocks of China to provide partners with a cultural support base.

But in the meantime, I suspect life for the partners of corporates in expanding markets will remain tough for some years to come.

Over summer Bernard Salt will write weekly for The Australian Business

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