Question:
Discuss the challenges of the management and leadership and recommendation for managing Gen Y employees (millennial) leadership?
Answer:
Introduction:
Decision making is the most vital task for operating a business successfully. The leaders of the organizations are responsible for taking decisions for different kind of business operations. They are responsible for handling the manpower of the business organizations. This paper talks about the leadership of the Generation Y. Generation Y is the time period between mid 1980 and the year 2000. This is an era with interesting qualities. This is an era known as results oriented and certain (Hewitt & Ukpere, 2012). The data innovation development and extension started in the past era referred as Generation X, the Y era was conceived into a period ruled by innovation and regularly sees more as to the advanced world of the Digital era. They further are seen to know more about data innovation than their instructors and their guardians. This study has the aim of discovering the difficulties faced by supervisors today at work who should dependably enroll, train and continually persuade this exceedingly complex era of representatives so that their abundance of inventiveness can be used by the organization (Levine, 2013). The study will be focused at the companies with the huge amount of workforces such that Google, Zappos, Trader Joe’s etc. With a specific end goal to achieve the desired outcome, it will stay crucial for association and organization administrators to comprehend these new representatives.
Challenges of the management and leadership:
The modern business world has a wider range of challenges in the area of the leadership and employee management. The leaders have the responsibility of managing the employees for achieving the desired level of output. At present, the millennials are representing one of the quarters of the total population of the world. They have covered a vast area of the employment as the employees of the different types of business organizations. Therefore the leaders of the business organizations have the responsibility of effective handling of the workforce where the majority of them belong to Gen Y (Naim, 2016).
Traditional leadership style cannot be fully applied for the management of the employees of Gen Y. There is some confirmation that Generation Y is unique in relation to different eras, regardless of the fact that this perspective is not absolutely consistent. The values and beliefs at workplaces of the business organizations are the causes of the differences between the management styles of different business organizations (Oc & Bashshur, 2013). A few outer powers in society impact the making of a common quality framework among individuals in each verifiable connection, keeping in mind the world is constantly changing, so too do the common worth frameworks between eras. The distinctions are showed, for instance, in qualities and convictions about work and associations, hard working attitudes, work related objectives and what is normal from working life (Kultalahti & Liisa Viitala, 2014). A few specialists express that the generational contrasts are in any event mostly identified with individuals’ diverse life circumstances, to their age and work residency and the quantity of years spent working full-time.
The backbone of an organization is its human capital. The most widely recognized issue that develops with the United Kingdom pioneers and administrators is that they fall flat in making the business environment and society that can manufacture the required systems for using and exchanging of data, backings and tries advancement and danger taking conduct and values inclining (Hansbrough, Lord & Schyns, 2015). Picking up favorable position of having a worth chain all through the world by a little association is known as globalization. The organization that wins in globalization conveys of offshore operations and a broad production network. The culturally diverse capabilities are tremendously required by the managers and supervisors to lead and oversee over the distinctive political, societies and geological frameworks of various nations (Williams & Turnbull, 2015). The danger of a worldwide temperature alteration is normally confronted by the non-benefit organizations, foundations, enterprises, open area organizations and the legislature in today’s reality (Stahno & Yang, 2014). An economical methodology must be received by associations to effectively accomplish their targets and objectives. The workforce must be sufficiently compelling to lead and deal with the practical ventures.
Motivating the employees is one of the most important parts of the leaders of the business organizations. The employees belong to the Generation Y are well aware about their needs and responsibilities at the workplaces.
The leaders have the higher level of responsibility of achieving high level of works form the employees by motivating them using proper methods. Theory X and theory Y should be considered for motivating the employees of the Gen Y. The millennials are able to provide high level of service to the organization but they should get the proper level of motivation from the leaders of the organization. The leaders have the responsibility to ensure the employees can get the necessary facilities while they are working in the workplaces of the organization (VanMeter et al. 2013). The employees should get rewards for the better work performance at the workplace. The rewards can force the employees to give their best level of effort for the organizations. Besides the power of motivating the employees the rewards can also make the employees greedy. They may expect more advantages from the organization which may be not applicable for the better work performance from them. Therefore the leaders have to keep a proper level of balance of rewards and appreciative activities while following the motivational strategies to handle the employees of Gen Y (Barnett, 2014).
Another important task of the leaders is to assign the right jobs to the right people. This is the edge of technology where the employees are able to perform better with the effective level of help of the technical equipments. Therefore, they need appropriate equipments and responsibilities which are suitable for them. Therefore, the leaders should consider the expertise of the employees before assigning any job responsibilities to them (Yahya et al. 2015). This kind of job designing approach helps the leaders to motivate the employees by getting the highest level of job satisfaction at the workplace. Therefore, suitable job designing can be seen as one of the major challenges of the leaders of the big organizations which are dealing with the Gen Y employees.
Another important challenge of leading the employees of Gen Y is to provide theme flexile workplace where they can feel free and be able to give the best performance. They should understand the requirements of the employees and then design the proper working atmosphere for them. In this area, they have to think about both of the management and the employee perspective. Balancing these two factors is a challenging work for the leaders of the big organizations (Jerome et al. 2014).
Recommendation for managing Gen Y employees (millennial) leadership:
Leaders must transform their mindset in order to manage the millennial into the working space. The leaders must adapt and bring some changes in their organization which will help them to handle the Gen Y employees.
Adaptation 1: Gen Y employees are hungry for interaction and thirsty for acknowledgement. As they are new in the professional world, they always look for motivations and purposes of their jobs. Therefore, leaders must encourage them in by commenting on their progress or by acknowledging their good work. This will make the Gen Y employees feel like they are working with a purpose. Organizational leaders must keep the Gen Y employees engaged in the position by joining in their efforts frequently (Malik & Khera, 2014).
Adaptation 2: Leaders of an organization must understand that Gen Y employees were raised under the influence of internet, therefore, they are able to provide infinite number of alternatives and options for your company. However, this does not mean that a leader can relinquish all structure and control in the hands of the Gen Y employees. What they can do is to allow them to work flexibly which will help the company to meet the desired goal (Moorthy, 2014).
Adaption 3: One of the biggest issues with the Gen Y employees are they cannot put their loyalty in a company easily therefore, their job-hopping is on high. Organizational leaders must understand that the mindset of Gen Y employees is different and they will not compromise at any stages. Therefore, leaders of a company must take a break from interview, recruitment and hiring process. They must focus on job retention as it will allow the Gen Y employees to continue learning and building their skills. This will increase their loyalty towards the company (Levine, 2013).
Adaption 4: Gen Y employees are seeking greater fulfillment from their careers and they are willing to work hard. Organizational leaders must understand this fact and must create this type or environment in the company. Senior authorities of an organization can provide mentors and exciting workplace with challenging projects to help he Gen Y employees to understand how important the work they do is (Kultalahti & Liisa Viitala, 2014).
Adaption 5: Because of the Influence of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, gen Y employees are prone to make friendship and social connection with their colleagues and bosses in the organization. Therefore, it is found that, Gen Y employees love to work at those places where the organization allows them to interact with their colleagues more freely and frequently. Besides, for Gen Y employees, personal style is also an important factor. While Gen Y knows that work place means formal outfits and business suits, many prefer a work environment where they can wear comfortable clothing to express their individuality. Organizational leaders should consider these factors and can redecorate their organizational structure (Stahno & Yang, 2014).
Conclusion:
After conducting the research work on the leadership of the big organizations which have a large amount of Gen Y employees, it can be concluded that the leaders are facing high level of challenges for this. The employees of the Gen Y are concern about their work and the requirements form the organizations for the effective level of work. Because of this reason the leaders should be very conscious to ensure that the employees are getting the necessary resources from the organization’s end. The leaders should design the job places and the job responsibilities by understanding the efficiency level of the employees. The modern culture should be followed at the workplaces to give a flexible environment the employees. The leaders should encourage the employees by some motivational strategy.
References:
Barnett, N. (2014). Inspiring Gen Y employees. Training & Development,41(6), 14.
Hansbrough, T. K., Lord, R. G., & Schyns, B. (2015). Reconsidering the accuracy of follower leadership ratings. The Leadership Quarterly, 26(2), 220-237.
Hewitt, M. L., & Ukpere, W. I. (2012). Leadership challenges associated with the management of Generation Y employees: A proposed theoretical model.African Journal of Business Management, 6(19), 5999.
Jerome, A., Scales, M., Whithem, C., & Quain, B. (2014). Millennials in the workforce: Gen Y workplace strategies for the next century. E-Journal of Social & Behavioural Research in Business, 5(1), 1.
Kultalahti, S., & Liisa Viitala, R. (2014). Sufficient challenges and a weekend ahead–Generation Y describing motivation at work. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 27(4), 569-582.
Levine, D. S. (2013). Leading in a Gen Y World-A Corporate Essay. Journal of Executive Education, 8(1), 6.
Malik, S., & Khera, S. N. (2014). New generation–great expectations: Exploring the work attributes of gen y. Global Journal of Finance and Management, 6(5), 433-438.
Moorthy, R. (2014). An Empirical Study of Leadership Theory Preferences among Gen Y in Malaysia. Review of Integrative Business and Economics Research, 3(2), 398.
Naim, M.F., 2016. Knowledge sharing as an intervention for Gen Y employees’ intention to stay. Industrial and Commercial Training, 48(3).
Oc, B., & Bashshur, M. R. (2013). Followership, leadership and social influence. The Leadership Quarterly, 24(6), 919-934.
Stahno, J., & Yang, J. (2014). Are There Any Best Practices for Developing Gen Y/Young Professionals?.
VanMeter, R. A., Grisaffe, D. B., Chonko, L. B., & Roberts, J. A. (2013). Generation Y’s ethical ideology and its potential workplace implications.Journal of business ethics, 117(1), 93-109.
Williams, S., & Turnbull, S. (2015). Developing the Next Generation of Globally Responsible Leaders Generation Y Perspectives and the Implications for Green HRD. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 1523422315599623.
Yahya, K. K., Yean, T. F., Johari, J., & Saad, N. A. (2015). The Perception of Gen Y on Organizational Culture, Religiosity and Corruption in Malaysian Public Organizations. Procedia Economics and Finance, 31, 251-261.
