Did you complete talentsmoothie’s survey about what Generation Y want from work? More than 2,500 under-30s did, and those results will be fed back to employers to tell them what they need to do to make you want to work for them.

We thought you might like to know too. Here’s Sally Bibb from talentsmoothie to run through the results…

Online career survey

Some of you said that filling in the survey was like getting a bit of online careers coaching, as it made you think about things you hadn’t previously. That in itself is a great result. If you haven’t completed it yet and want to, visit www.tellithowitis.com.

So, what did you tell us, and what, therefore, do organisations need to do?

From the 26 questions we asked, these are the themes that came up over and over again:

• you want to be led by inspiring leaders
• you want your managers to listen to you and trust you
• having good mentors is important to you
• being able to do work that you love is more important than money.

The important of good leadership

Good leadership was the big message. Good leadership is why you stay and bad leadership is why you leave. Four out of the top five reasons for leaving a company were to do with poor leadership.

Here are some of the things people said about why they left their jobs:

• ’Having no input, just doing what my manager told me’
• ’My manager not listening to me’
• ’Being asked to continue monotonous work without regard for my abilities and with my efforts being notably unappreciated’

What should companies do to attract and keep people like you

Based on the results of the survey, we advise companies to do the following:

• make sure they train their leaders to be great
• give you a good induction programme that helps you cope well with organisational life
• give you a mentor who can support you and help you to develop
• get to know you as an individual and match the job to your strengths
• run workshops to help different generations of employees understand one another and work better together
• instead of seeing your differences as a pain, to see them as an opportunity for the organisation.

Are you different from earlier generations?

You might be wondering whether Generation Y is all that different from older generations. Well – there are some differences; Generation Xers and Baby Boomers tend to put up with things which you wouldn’t. For example, they like good leadership too but not getting it is less likely to make them leave a job. At talentsmoothie our hunch is that older workers will be secretly pleased that Generation Y have been the catalyst for some positive changes in the workplace.

Using these results to help find a job

We hope you have found these results interesting. Next time you go for an interview you can ask your potential employers what specifically they are doing to appeal to Generation Y.

• Have they got a mentoring programme?
• What development opportunities do they provide?
• Do they do inter-generational awareness training to make everyone’s life easier?

Forward-thinking companies realise that they need to do all they can to nurture their younger workforce and make the most of their strengths. They see Generation Y as an opportunity to ‘future-proof’ their firm. The less visionary ones see Generation Y as a pain that has to be endured!

More results from the survey

Why not suggest to your employer that they contact us for a copy of the research report – they might welcome the suggestion.

Sally Bibb is a director and co-founder of talentsmoothie. She writes books and articles on organisational culture, trust and careers. You can contact her at sally@talentsmoothie.com.