New Ways of Education Management: Y Wait?
29 November 2011, by Jan Stevenson
Jan Stevenson heads Transitions Projects at Victoria University’s School of Business Services. Her career in education began as a secondary school teacher, followed by teaching at the Western Melbourne Institute of TAFE and then, as a result of the Insitute’s merger with that University, held various roles at Victoria University. The latter include as Head of the School of Business (TAFE) and as Acting Head of the School of Sport and Science. Jan has a BA and a Master of Tertiary Education Management from the University of Melbourne. In her present role she has developed exercises and cases to assist managers in dealing with generational differences.
Trying to select which applicant would make the best new lecturer or staff member? As you search hopefully through the stack of CVs, consider this: recent research by the Queensland Government found that by 2012 (that’s in a month or so!) 40% of the Australian population will belong to the group dubbed Gen Y - those born between 1978 and 1994.
Some of them have already been in jobs in education for a few years. Have they stayed? Are they happy with the status quo? Are they happy with receiving a small incremental reward each year? Are they proving to be resolute researchers? Are they clever and resourceful academics? Are they excellent communicators?
Familiar with electronic media from infancy, Gen Y are social media savvy and accept as standard the modern technological and household conveniences that their parents and grandparents took a lifetime to afford. At childhood party games everyone was awarded a prize, so, many of them don’t understand about winning and losing. Translate this into the business world and it means they cannot fathom concepts such as “good”,” good enough”, or “do better”.
Their childhood homes had either both parents working or one parent only. They tend to look for guidance and approval from their peers, as evidenced by the growth of sites such as Twitter and Facebook. This electronic isolation is thought to have made many of them lack compassion as they operate in a social world completely removed from actual human interaction.
What are they like as a group? Open the papers any weekend and you will see public brawls and violence as they get out there into society. Or else televised current affairs magazine programme highlight bullying and other forms of cyber-crime. Does this mean they do not understand the generally accepted norms of behaviour? Have they had such a privileged upbringing that they do not believe those norms actually apply to them? Do they realise that having hundreds of “friends” on Facebook and Twitter is no substitute for knowing how to interact socially face-to-face?
On the other hand, Gen Y are the most educated generation ever and the first identified as a global entity. 40% of all Africans and 80% of Chinese farmers use mobile communications technology. The latest gizmo finds its way across the world without any delay.
So, having considered all of this, try to mentally project these individuals as employees of the tertiary education system in Australia.
The internet and other electronic communications technology have changed how we work. The rub is that this is most likely not to be the case in tertiary education. We still collect folk into groups and call them student cohorts, still expect them to attend lectures and interact with services such as Orientation, Focus Week, Campus Volunteers and so on. Even if we get them to listen to our podcast it will be at a certain time on a certain date—not infinitely flexible.
What would help is a completely revised way for a tertiary education institution to interact with Gen Y because, along with the negatives outlined above, there are many positives:
- They have had far more opportunity for part-time work than any other generation. This means that they have had the opportunity to overcome most of the potentially isolating and antisocial aspects of their upbringing.
- Their experience of part-time work, being many and varied, could prove a useful source of information for planning how your work team should communicate and liaise with the non-academic world. This is true when it is considered that many academics went from school to university, to graduate school, to working in one or more universities or similar institutions.
- How they work—electronically, through the internet—is the way to go. That is, they can show the rest of us how to do it, and we can contribute the depth of knowledge or experience that they may lack. Peer learning can be a very powerful management tool but is often overlooked and an outside expert is called in when the cost may be unwarranted.
- They could provide a valuable lesson in maintaining a work/life balance, as studies show that they are keenly aware of the need for it. They are also more concerned about many aspects of life that most of us take heed of only when something happens, such as caring for the environment, social justice and gender equality.
- Although they may lack the 1960s-gold-watch-award loyalty to their employers, their “work smarter, not harder” attitude could teach their elders in surprising ways.
Instead of trying to enforce patience with all our bureaucratic procedures, perhaps we need to radically change the organisation of our work teams and our management groups. Perhaps our policies and procedures could be streamlined, drop their verbosity and still comply with corporate governance. Perhaps our very politicised workplaces could develop genuine collegiality. Perhaps there could be rewards other than a raise or a promotion.
Some suggestions to start with:
- Introduce rotation of work duties. Teaching roles and higher duties to many so that employees are not simply expected (or allowed) to fill the same role every year.
- Re-write the position descriptions so that a certain amount of flexibility is available to allow such a rotation to occur.
- Find ways in which each member of a work team can be responsible for the success (or failure) of an expected output, such as Orientation arrangements, arranging visiting speakers, utilising the Careers Skills Service and so on.
- Showcase some of the excellent computer and technological skills your Gen Y staff members possess.
- Make staff exchanges almost mandatory, especially if your Department has offshore campuses.
- Sign everyone in the Department up to the same social site for blogging like Yammer, for example.
- Discuss, as a team, what kind of incentives would be appropriate within the group.
Whatever you come up with remember that Gen Y are the front line of where the world is at the moment. Include them, train them, mentor them and help them to step up. When generations meet there should be transfers on both sides.
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Dom Harden