HR: Mind Your Language!

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Mervyn Dinnen returns today and follows up his last post to look at the apparent obsession with Gen Y. (Ed Scrivener)

HR: Mind Your Language!

During a recent US HR conference, whilst the usual Gen Y myths were being trotted out, Matt Charney tweeted out:

‘Replace the phrase “Gen Y” with any other protected class and you realize how ridiculous this is as a "best practice" for HR’

The US HR blogger Laurie Ruettimann tried it out:

• Puerto Ricans demand flexibility in the workforce.
• When you think black people, think social and mobile.
• Asians: Confident. Connected. Open to Change.
• Muslims do not use Twitter in large numbers, but college-aged girls with disabilities show the greatest enthusiasm for the application.
• Native Americans want to work in a loose, collaborative environment without a ton of structure.

Clearly this sounds ridiculous but at the same that this was happening I was at the CIPD HRD conference, at which a lot of the same generalisations were being aired in the name of insight to help HR practitioners better ‘understand’ the younger workforce. I thought at the time that 30 years ago the same would probably have been said about women, or ethnic minorities, but that thankfully we have moved on…although our need to pigeonhole the groups of workers that we find difficult to assimilate in to our business structures seems to remain.

The fact that HR not only countenances this advice - after all, someone must be engaging the ever growing band of workforce consultants and employer brand specialists who peddle this wisdom – but appears to embrace it and potentially use it in workforce and talent acquisition planning, is a major cause for concern.

The values, aspirations, ambitions and preferences of younger people are broadly shaped by social, economic, cultural, peer and parental influences during adolescence, hence will shift every 5 -7 years or so, but within that they will be varied. One of the leading US commentators in the ‘Gen Y’ space refers to her teenage daughter as her ‘case study’ – even though this girl’s influence will be very different to those of someone 10-12 years older (still, supposedly, the same generation). For example, an adolescence spent in a global recession is not wholly comparable to one spent during an economic boom.

My concerns with HR over-embracing this are:

• We fail to value the real potential in individuals and have a unrealistic view of their ability to fit in to our companies
• We needlessly create an ‘inter-generational’ conflict by inferring that different ages of workers require different treatment
• We give them a poor early experience of the workplace, and the recruitment process, which will leave them with a lasting negative impression

The language of hiring has changed, with the term ‘recruitment’ largely replaced by ‘talent acquisition’. This may just be words, but their inferences are different. Talent implies something special, gifted, unique, and superior, and its universal usage would imply that for every position we need the best, the most special and gifted.

I often think of the top US basketball player Michael Jordan who once remarked…

“Talent wins games but teamwork and intelligence win championships”

…and wonder if our language around ‘talent’ somehow ignores what it takes to be successful in the long run. Do we call the ‘teamwork’ and ‘intelligence’ talent too?

A recent study by UKCES found that the UK ranks highly (and therefore poorly) for under-utilising the skills of its 25-29 year old graduates, with 32.7% of them (one of the highest in the OECD) working in jobs below their skill levels. This is the same generation who we often routinely write off as spoiled, having a sense of entitlement, lacking proactivity and being dreamers and unrealistic in their expectations.

Maybe if we minded our language, and looked more for what they can offer and spent less time on the cod psychology, we may find a way to better leverage their intelligence, teamwork and abilities in the day to day work environment.

Let me know what you think…

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Discuss HR is the HR blog written by members of Human Resources UK, the 10,000 member strong LinkedIn group dedicated to the HR professionals in the UK.  Discuss HR is published twice weekly and looks to take an insightful, informative and sometimes irreverent view on the world of HR – all with the purpose of generating a discussion.

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