Employers take leaf from Generation Y

More and more organisations are looking at reverse mentoring, writes Fiona Smith.

The world of work has been tipped on its head. Employers can throw money and prestige at a job vacancy, and they are humbly grateful if the interviewees turn up for the job interview.

And then, who is interviewing whom? As generation Y expert Peter Sheahan says, with the unemployment rate at historically low levels, young people are likely to be choosing between six job offers.

"You bring them in for an interview and they start interviewing back," he says.

They want to know what hours they will be expected to work, whether they will be able to travel, how long they will have to wait to be considered for promotion and what work/life programs are offered.

Also changing is the teacher-student relationship between boss and young employee. Increasing numbers of organisations are looking at reverse mentoring, where the young people in the office are asked to share their knowledge with the baby boomers (aged 43 to 61) and older generation Xers (29 to 42).

This knowledge may take the form of teaching the executive team about the etiquette of blogging or some other IT-related challenge, how to market to young people, or social trends that may be unfamiliar to the more mature audience.

At ANZ Institutional Banking, there has been a reverse mentoring program in place since May last year. As part of a pilot program, which has now become entrenched, 13 global managing directors and divisional heads did some navel gazing to identify where their knowledge may be lacking and came up with a list of things they would like to learn from their mentors.

The bank advertised internally for mentors, who were asked what they would be able to teach the executives and then a group was chosen, including young people, women, non-Anglo Saxon, disabled and gay people. All but two of the executives to be mentored were male, and only one had a non-Anglo ethnic origin.

The head of people capital at ANZ Institutional, Andrew Hambleton, says there have been great benefits for both sides of the relationship.

"We have had extremely positive feedback," he says. "It has generated a lot of discussion among the leadership team and there have been some of those 'aha!' moments."

The male executives overwhelmingly wanted to know about the concerns of the women in the organisation, and the two women were curious to find out how they differed and what they might learn, says Hambleton.

All were pleased to get an insight into how the bank was performing for its staff.

The mentors, on the other hand, have a priceless networking opportunity and have been able to learn how things work at an organisational level.

The program has also been able to achieve its goal of raising the profile of some of the women in the organisation. One young woman was able to shadow the managing director of markets for "a couple of days" so she could get to know him better. She was five or six years into her career and in a different line of business.

Hambleton says the group committed to meet regularly, over coffee.

"The mentors took on a role of challenging the senior executives' views of the world," he says.

Sheahan, 27, a consultant on generation Y, plans to start a program later in the year called Mohawk in the Boardroom, co-inciding with his new book, Flip, due to be released by Random House in September.

Sheahan will put executives in touch with young people with expertise outside their usual sphere of knowledge. For example, he would like to introduce someone with a background in digital advertising to the chief executive of an insurance company.

"At the moment, I do all the reverse mentoring with my clients," Sheahan says. "They get to listen to someone half their age, who sees the world from a completely different angle."

Sheahan says the reverse mentoring often happens unintentionally: "A partner in a law firm, mentoring a young lawyer, recently told me it had made him completely change the way he was thinking about his own career.

"Increasing numbers of senior executives, mentoring 24- to 25-year-olds are telling me they are getting far more out of the experience than they are giving."

Reverse interviewing is another development that has human resources executives in a spin.

"They have to learn, as HR professionals, how to market to candidates," he says.

Recruiters can no longer rely on putting an ad in the paper or online, stating what requirements they have of applicants; they have to "sell" the job and the reputation of the employer.

"In Perth, the biggest problem they face is getting people to turn up for the job interview," he says.

And this is happening not just in the booming mining sector, it is across the board.

"Selling" a job to candidates is about finding out what makes it special. Why would someone leave their job to go and work for another company?

It's not just about the money, says Sheahan. He has been able to help struggling not-for-profit organisations fill vacancies by promoting them as a chance to make a difference, or add meaning.

He was also able to help a professional services firm increase its graduate acceptance rate for job offers by 50 per cent - when the firm had just been hoping to maintain its rate - by pushing the warm, social culture.

When the applications were received, the graduates were assigned "buddies" among the staff, they were interviewed at a round table, rather than a panel situation, the job description was "juiced up" to be less arbitrary, and the waiting rooms were relaxed with comfortable couches.

"It was them [the employers] telling their story though the process," says Sheahan.

The "price of entry" to the jobs marketplace for employers is now their ability to prove they are a great place to work for those who want the fast track, overseas travel, a clean and green environment or the chance to do pro bono or volunteer work.

"Employers have to be able to say they are making a difference to the world, that they do work for free."

Some employers will have a hard time finding anything that puts them in front of the opposition, and they will struggle to find and keep staff.

One of Sheahan's clients was certain people went to work there because of the leading edge technology and work on offer. After doing some research, the CEO was devastated to find people chose to work there because they got a rostered day off every second Friday, says Sheahan.

Published: 26 June 2007