As I wrote recently, employers are fast getting fed up with a generation of new employees who apparently want to do anything but work. The ‘I Am Special’ generation have grown into snowflakes who demand ‘fun rooms’, taking their pets to work and ‘sabbatical’ leave pretty much whenever they feel entitled to it (which is pretty much always).
But it’s not just the Fortune 500 set who are tearing their hair out because of lazy and entitled children and their ludicrous demands.
Collectively the nation’s biggest employers, Australian family business owners believe that, unlike previous generations, too many of our young people have an “entitlement mentality”, and it’s devastating productivity.
Family business researcher Ross Cameron says the majority of employing business owners say productivity is definitely a problem in their business. And they blame the attitudes of their young staff.
As the saying goes to the laptop class demanding to work from home: if you can do your job remotely from your home, someone can do it from a call centre in Bombay much cheaper. If Zoomers don’t want to work, AI will be happy to do the job for them.
Many see the implementation of technology, including artificial intelligence, as the way to reverse the culture and lift productivity.
My guess is, very few young employees understand that their employer is unhappy. Nor do they realise what is about to happen to them […]
the overwhelming productivity focus of SMEs is on staffing. They find it difficult to employ people in Australia and, regrettably, increasingly difficult to motivate staff.
And when things don’t work out, it creates even greater problems. They have arrived at a solution – embrace technology.
Then watch them shriek and march in the streets, squealing, Der rerberts terk er jerbs!
It’s summed up by one business owner who said: “We’ve been investing in improving for a long time. I’ve taken $1.5m in costs out of the business without impacting on revenue, mostly through AI, robotics and offshoring. I hate to say it, because I’m very pro-Australian, but it is very hard to make the case to employ in Australia.”
To be fair, I’ve often enough criticised Australian employers for welching on training local talent. Plenty of people complained, when employers were crying poor during Covid, that being Australian meant you were automatically rejected for certain jobs, mostly in labouring or primary production. Anecdotally, middle-management folk have confirmed that their bosses instruct them to prioritise foreign labour.
But young folk aren’t doing themselves any favours by so often biting the hand of employers, either.
Here are some of the comments from family business owners which highlight the problem […]
• “We have some really great staff members who work hard, but there are also some who, for example, will roster themselves off because it’s their birthday or even their boyfriend’s birthday. If I ever did that when I was 23 I wouldn’t have had a job! It’s just this sense of entitlement that they have. You’ve got to manage it, but it’s hard” […]
• “The days of giving people feedback can now be considered as bullying. There’s a lot of stuff you can’t say and do, and as a result things don’t get corrected, so it’s a very delicate position we’re in.”
It’s not all the Zoomers’ fault, either. Labor governments dancing to the crack of the union whip have made a red-tape minefield for small businesses.
• “What would improve our productivity would be a complete overhaul of the award system. The award system puts a stupid amount of restrictions on what our staff can do in terms of their work hours” […]
The industrial relations legislation has emphasised the rights of employees, rather than linking the success of the business with the rewards of the employees. That creates a vicious circle.
The explosion in nanny-state red tape is bad for workers, too.
Politicians at all three levels, plus the banking rules, have deliberately made it difficult for young people to buy a dwelling and raise a family. Instead of looking after our next generation, we have been enriching existing homeowners.
As if all that wasn’t bad enough, politicians at all levels are frantically making up bullshit fairy stories to frighten the children with, too.
And there is the threat of climate change, which adds to a sense of living for the present rather than the future.
Sad to say, but if you’re going to let the terror of a possible degree or two temperature increase by 2100 scare you out of getting up and going to work, then you deserve to be replaced by a robot.
