It used to beMillennials who copped all the flak for being lazy and entitled,famously labelled theMe,Me,Me generation byTimemagazine in 2013. But as Millennials are now straddling either side of 40,their younger colleagues – those born between 1996 and 2010 – are the new snowflakes.
As a younger worker,Kershaw’s comments felt like a diss to my generation. It felt like a pile-on,especially since many of us are struggling with thecost-of-living crisis andtwo-thirds of young people have given up on ever owning a home. But some early reports left out Kershaw’s actual point:“The world is changing,is what I’m saying.”
Kershaw was noting that the workforce has changed and the way we need to communicate with new colleagues,particularly younger people,needs to change as well. He plucked the “three compliments a week” figure from a 2022 Workhuman study into how recognition in the workplace amplifies wellbeing.
The report says,“Employee recognition is more than a nice-to-have – it’s essential”,and I couldn’t agree more. Praise is a fundamental human desire. It can be inspiring,motivational,stress-relieving and vindicating. Why wouldn’t you want to be appreciated in your workplace? Wouldn’t those in the Gen X,Gen Y and Baby Boomer demographic feel better if they were recognised more?
A consultant from the same company that conducted the research suggests older workers might be afraid to admit they want compliments and perhaps haven’t worked somewhere that provides them. The social environment when they were entering the workforce deemed that recognition was a “frivolous want instead of a foundational workplace need”.
Many younger workers understand that validation at work is motivational – and smart employers understand that caring about employees’ wellbeing is the way to keep them. We are putting more of ourselves into our careers,partly because other aspects of life in which previous generations found satisfaction are unavailable to us,like a family or buying a house.