NEXT GENERATION HR - CIPD

NEXT GENE
In particular, they want to be trusted to make decisions and are more open and willing to
challenge. They want a culture of honesty and openness.
‘The young generation, they come into the workforce and they have very different working
expectations. They have their own value they want to perceive. They’re more technology
orientated. They basically have a resources-rich life, and they are much more self-orientated
compared with the past generation…. They have a stronger intention to achieve what they
want to achieve. They much prefer open communications. They prefer less hierarchical
organisation. They would prefer getting them more freedom, a platform for them to use
their talent. They have probably less patience, they want to move faster.’
‘You’d be very surprised. In China, particularly the younger generation, they are very open.
They do come up, they do challenge the authority where they see things which they feel are
not fair. They come up to you or they write a lot of anonymous letters, even our chairman
receives a lot of anonymous letters – roughly at least one a month.’
And they are highly media-savvy. This means organisations need to be prepared to be more
open with the wider world as well.
For example, one interviewee spoke about hiring nurses. In recent years they have found
new ‘Gen Y’ nurses to be very technology-savvy. In particular they use online sharing tools
such as Facebook to describe their experiences. This means stories get in the press quickly
(and of course medical concerns are highly newsworthy). As a result, the hospital has had to
learn to be more open and media-savvy.
18
NEXT GENERATION HR