Melissa K. Mead has something to say about work and happiness…

When we think of the word “work,” what initially crosses our minds?  For some, it may evoke thoughts of strenuous tasks, or perhaps even unwanted stress… something that  we constantly try to avoid.  Others may flash back to how they pried themselves out of bed that very morning with the Jaws of Life, merely to get a jump on their work day.  But whether we love or hate our jobs, it’s not hard to be jealous of those who perceive work as fun!  It’s easy to complain about the things that we have to do.  But when does, or can work become something that we “want” to do? Every so often, I run into somebody who is just so incredibly infatuated with where they go and what they “get” to do everyday.  They always appear so joyous and thankful that their job is exactly what they want to spend the rest of their life doing.  And every time I do run into these people, I try to imagine if their sensations or emotions towards their jobs could be bottled up and sold over-the-counter at a local pharmacy.  Imagine that!  What a hot commodity it would be!  The store would be sold out of them before the man waiting for his prescription next to the check-out counter could even leave his chair!

More often than not, we are aware of more people who dislike going to their jobs everyday, than those who actually enjoy the daily grind of the workplace.  On occasion, we’ll hear the positives from people, regarding their jobs or work situations.  “You know, I just love working with so-and-so.  She went completely out of her way to help me today with this proposal …  What a neat gal!  You know, we should really have her and her husband over for dinner sometime!”  But, as great as that sounded, we tend to more frequently hear the: “Ugh(s).  It feels so good to be home.  I can’t believe people these days.  I’m not even sure how so-and-so got hired!  It’s just God-awful … every day I can hear him talking on his cell phone clear across the mass of cubicles in the office!”

What I’ve come to find about why people are either happy or dissatisfied with their jobs, is quite simple.  It has nothing to do with their salary or tax write-offs, or yearly income, or any of that technical monetary “stuff.”  The cold hard truth, is that people who are happy with their work and careers are simply happier overall.  I’d be hard-pressed to  find many happy people who legitimately hate their jobs.  And because work is where people devote a large portion of their time, It seems to me that people would have to be happy when immersed in their work in order to be a happy person.  The unfortunate thing, is that “happiness” itself tends to often be one of those overused cliche words (i.e. “happiness is a virtue”) that no one takes seriously any more.  Little do we understand that it is a key component for perceiving work as enjoyable, and loving what we do for a living.

Aside from looking through a general scope of the “whats” and the “whys” of liking one’s job in today’s workplace, there just so happens to be clear-cut differences between different generations’ motives in the professional workplace.  It’s certainly not difficult to sense a variation among younger employees’ motives or drives, as opposed to the older, more seasoned managers.  Also, just to be clear, it’s not necessarily a matter of dedication or love of one’s company that distinguishes drive or motivation among fellow workers from different generations.  Younger employees in today’s workplace, otherwise known as “Millennials” (age 15 through 30), are associated with tech-savviness, multitasking, and the notion of instant gratification, while simultaneously, achieving “life balance.”  The older, and more experienced workers belong to the “Boomer” generation (those born during the demographic birth boom between 1946 and 1964).

What we’ve come to notice about these two very different generations, is that not only do they process information in completely different fashions, but (on a simpler level) the satisfaction that they get from their jobs is aroused by different means as well.  Accomplishment is certainly one of these means by which satisfaction is achieved, but so also, are creativity and intuitiveness.  As is stated in Finkelstein and Gavin’s FUSE, Millennials aren’t merely a generation with “unique skills” and technological awareness.  What’s more intriguing about Millennials, is that they don’t look “particularly for answers, but [rather] for options.”  This is truly where the motives of the Millennials and the motives of the Boomers come to a fork in the road.

If you hadn’t guessed already, I myself, am a Millennial.  Guilty as charged.  It’s unfortunate that so many people assume that we within the 15-30 age group are only self-centered human beings who are out in the working world, solely for self-satisfaction.  Let me explain this common misconception that has been planted atop of us youngins.  As far as my generation’s motives regarding “liking to go to work” are concerned, we aren’t so much apprehensive about the methods that lead to the output.  Rather, we are more interested, simply in the output, itself… ultimately disregarding how we shall get there.  Quoting the American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms, us Millennials tend to lean on the phrase, “Where there is a will, there is a way,” coined in the early 1800s.  This terminology, by no means, exemplifies that Millennials will take short cuts or cheat in order to accomplish a task that their Boomer boss expects them to accomplish tasks in a certain and orderly manner.  It only suggests that because Millennials have grown up in a thriving age of technology with things like video and computer games, we thrive on creativity and intuitiveness, rather than just accomplishment.  Hence, if we can find a more innovative route of accomplishment that  also incorporates originality or uniqueness, we are more likely to travel down that path than the one already paved for us.

Therefore, the motives of Millennials are essentially, the same as those of our Boomer managers… self-satisfaction, accomplishment, but also, the gratification in knowing that how we arrived at our end result wasn’t by following the same old directions.  One might put it this way… with fresh eyes and fresh hearts, Millennials are able to disregard the conception of “a wrong way” of doing things.  Rather, we like to idealize the notion of options, and how the only wrong way, is not taking any “way” at all.

This leads me to my last point.  The difference between accomplishing something and creating something, certainly straddles the line of the Boomer/Millennial generation gap that both Boomers and Millennials would simply love to figure out.  Ever since the Millennial generation began filtering into the workplace, the notion of creativity struck a new chord.  Some may refer to the intermixing of Boomers and Millennials as a “mash-up,” but I prefer to call it a fusing of ideas and intelligence.  By joining forces, as Finkelstein and Gavin’s book proclaims, both the experienced Boomers, and the boundary-less Millennials will FUSE together, “igniting the full power of the creative economy!”

– Melissa K. Mead

38. “The workplace is not a democracy.”

39. “At least skim the table of contents and zero in on the essentials of your Code of Corporate Conduct, aka the Employee Handbook.”

40. “Almost all employees are at-will employees, who can be fired for any reason, or for no reason at all, at any time (within public policy constraints). Employees have the legal right to quit their jobs at any time, for any reason, too.”

41. “Know what sexual harassment is, and what to do about it.”

42. “You are what you do. All behavior is public.”

43. “Your appearance matters.”

44. “You have no right to privacy in the workplace.”

33. “We all work for money. But the importance of money is a matter of degree.”

34. “Understand that all components of pay are negotiable. And that you are the chief negotiator.”

35. “A pay for performance annual 2-3% annual raise works out to about a 6 pack of beer per pay period.”

36. “There are ‘cheats’ to even the most rigid pay for performance plans, e.g., Know how your organization makes money. Whatever else you do, align your work with some part of that process.

37. “Always go for the pay for potential option.”

28. “It’s not who you are underneath but what you do that defines you.”
29. “The most likeable people get promoted (not the hardest workers).”
30. “Be yourself. Really.”
31. “Without visual and aural cues, people often misinterpret emails’ intent and message.”
32. “You cannot have it all. You can have the things you want most, intermittently.”

24. “For-profit organizations are looking for people who will help them make more money than they will cost.”

25. “For non-profits, employerw need externally-focused, future-oriented passion for the cause the non-profit exists to serve.”

26. “Understand the business strategy and how you can help create value.”

27. “There is no privacy. Many employers search MySpace and Facebook for the profiles of applicants – and current employees. Vet your profiles on social networking sites or secure access for friends only.”

20. “Millennials expect both hard dollars and soft ego, lifestyle and workplace boosters.”

21. “For Millennials, salary and benefits are not as important as they have been to Boomers or, they are not important in the same way. Millennial economic realities are different, as are their perspectives and lifestyles.”

22. “Develop a unique motivational profile for each employee, creating a flexible compensation program that recognizes the specific attributes, over time, of each. It is the creation of possibilities.”

23. “ASK employees what they want.”

15. “Millennials leave jobs not because there is a compelling reason to leave but because there is no compelling reason to stay.”

16. “To motivate them, you need to float their boat regularly: pennies raining down on their desk, or more frequent time off.”

17. “Socially meaningless work is a major cause of stress, especially for Millennials. Connect work to meaning.”

18. “Millennials do require continual training. Accessible training likely will result in ’stickiness’ – their becoming intrapreneurs who will run your business 10-20 years down the road.”

19. “Millennials are more psychological than other generations. They need to be engaged more on the emotive than cognitive scale. They are forcing managers to manage people, not jobs.”

10. “Millennials have their own language, which is verbal, unstructured, abbreviated, tech-based and global.”

11. “They think mosaically.”

12. “They are the first post-literate generation.”

13. “Millennials are a multi-model generation, and you need to communicate in ways to engage multiple learning channels. The more communications styles you use, the fewer Millennials you’ll lose.”

14. “If you want to learn more about how Millennials communicate (and think), access their media.”

5. “Attract Millennials to your organization by understanding, accepting and mirroring their key needs in your recruitment strategies… and by looking for them where they’re looking for you.”

6. “Technology has given them a jackpot of choices: If they do not get what they want from one source, they can (and will) immediately go to another.”

7. “Sell your people, not your company.”

8. “Millennials want an emotional connection to their employer, their work and their colleagues.”

9. “Since a majority of them link to each other through social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, create an account on both and set up your own recruiting site on each.”

Tragedy happens every day. Sometimes we hear about it. Often we read about people in the newspaper that we don’t even know and sadness overcomes us. A tragedy happened last week. It involved people that I knew and while no one will ever know the real reason it happened, so many people are grieving about the outcome and trying to make sense of it all.

Three individuals were killed inside a place where people are taken care of. Three really good people! There were lots of rumors swirling about layoffs that had occurred, pending layoffs, reducing shifts and difficult economic times inside this place that seemed to cause one individual to react. Who knows what difficulties were outside of this place for this individual? No one has answers, and in reality, having answers doesn’t do much to relieve the sadness that has touched everyone. Employees still have to go to this place and perform the duties that they do to continue taking care of patients and their families the best way they know how. They have support from employee assistance resources and from each other, which helps. Each employee will grieve in their own way and manage to get through the days and weeks ahead.

There may never be a way to avoid a situation such as this and we will never be able to control everything, but in the world today, we need to be communicating more, not less. I often wonder with the economy the way it is today, why there aren’t more organizations holding focus groups, department team building activities, and employee assistance resources tapped into the group level on the front end of difficult times. Each of these activities creates an opportunity for employees to share what they are feeling and going through. Often, more focused communication on how to get through tough times together as a team helps people to see that they aren’t alone in all of this. If this tragic event can bear any good, it would be for organizations to talk about what happened and create more opportunities to open up and share thoughts, feelings, worries, etc.
I can’t imagine what the families are going through. We send off our loved ones to work/school certainly not expecting anything like this to happen.

Makes me hug mine a little bit tighter….