Working With The ?New? Generation

By Gayle Buske

I’ve heard them called by many names as of late: Generation Y, Gen Y, The Plug-and-Play Generation, The Gotta-Feel-Good Generation. What they’re all referring to is the new young generation – our current 20-somethings. Every generation “deals” with the generation who comes after them. Their different views, their different ways of doing things, and so on; this generation is no exception.

Why is everyone talking about this new generation now though? They’ve been coming along for years. They’re in their 20’s now, after all! Because now they’re starting to impact the workforce and because we couldn’t predict their group characteristics until we saw them in action. In some ways they’re changing the landscape for the better, in some ways we oldies would say for the worse.

Regardless of the nostalgia we feel for the “old days” this generation is plunging headlong into the workforce and will impact you and your business at some point. There’s really no sense fighting it. No generation has ever changed the generation which came after it; not once that generation reached its 20’s anyway. These are the kids we raised and we did raise them this way, so let’s figure out how to work with them. To work with them we first need to understand them.

What makes this generation tick (or turn off) and what is the impact on businesses looking to hire them?

Problem: They’re not called The Plug-and-Play Generation for nothing. This generation grew up on video games and television while their parents were out working and making (what they viewed as) better lives for their families. This led to a whole generation of children, now entering the workforce, who need instant gratification in whatever it is they do. Whether its work or play, the satisfaction must be immediate.

Solution: What this means to the business owner looking to hire qualified workers is that you need to be diligent in assigning tasks to (or rather asking the worker if they’d be happy to do the tasks) that they enjoy doing. You must challenge this generation to the capacity in which they want to be challenged.

Problem: This generation waits for nothing and no one. If they don’t like the game, they find a new game to play and new people to play it with – now – not tomorrow or next week. Simple as that. Think pulling the PS2 game out of the player and inserting one they think they may like better.

Solution: This goes back to speed again. They’re used to moving at the speed of the internet, not the speed of the horseless carriage. You’re going to have to give this generation what it’s looking for or prepare to lose them. Regular check-ins individually to gauge their interest and excitement is critical to keeping this generation happy and working for you.

Problem: The Generation Y’s demand that they feel good about what they’re doing. If they don’t feel good about it, they’re not going to do it. Again, simple as that and no amount of money will convince them otherwise. Remember: they watched their parents work and work and work to earn a few extra bucks and what did it get them? Absentee parents who were rich. This generation wants quality, not necessarily quantity.

Solution: Sometimes the work just isn’t all that gratifying. However, you can combat that by showing your gratitude in the work being done. Often the sheer pleasure of helping someone else and that person being grateful is enough for the worker to receive the gratification they need.

Problem: The generation of ADD. Oh yes, this is where ADD became popular. The Gen Y’s are not going to pay attention for long. They want their information fast and to the point.

Solution: Don’t waste time with long drawn out memos and information. Just shoot it straight and fast!

Problem: A recent study suggested that the average tenure in a job for Generation Y’s is 18 months. Wow, what happened to life, or even a few years? Unfortunately those days are but a memory. As older workers retire and leave the workforce, we’re left with the generation we raised and we need to count on them to fill the open positions within our companies. Remember again that this generation watched their parents stick in jobs for life, only to be spat out by the very corporations and unions who claimed they’d protect them – when they were juuuuuusssst about to collect that pension. The Generation Y’s aren’t going to hang around to let that happen to them.

Solution: There’s no changing this generation’s stick ability. So as a business owner you have two options: 1) Make the work enjoyable or 2) Prepare in advance for every single worker’s eventual departure. If you opt with number 1, you need to figure out what it is that makes each and every one of your workers happy. They must be regarded as the individuals they are and with their own set of needs and instructions. Prepare to meet those needs or move on to number 2: The most crucial thing any business owner can do is to have instructions written for every task that is performed within their company. Put all those instructions in a safe place and hang on to them so you can pass them on to the worker’s successor. In staffing, one of the biggest complaints we hear from clients is the need to retrain the next person. I’m sorry – that’s the way it is nowadays. We train and we retrain and we need to be ready for it.

Problem: Lack of office etiquette. Check out this recent article on Yahoo! News about modern office etiquette (and lack of it) http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/careerist/40342. Unfortunately, as the article suggests, the new generation may not even know they’re breaking the rules! Etiquette in their world is far different than that of other generations.

Solution: As my husband and business partner says, “But wrong is still wrong and right is still right”. However, with the internet and a new generation, is this perhaps the new “right”. Maybe, maybe not. If most families are dysfunctional, doesn’t dysfunction become the new “normal”? Unfortunately I think the new generation has us beat in sheer numbers folks. In this writer’s opinion there’s not much we can do but learn to deal.

Problem: As another article http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/careerist/38889 on Gen Y’s by Penelope Trunk suggests: “They won’t play the face-time game.” That means they’re not going to sit in the office just to make you happy. They know that work can be done from home (or from the beach) just as well as it can be done sitting in the office.

Solution: Let ‘em work from home! Why not!? Working from home offers the ultimate in flexibility (something this generation demands) and helps keep this generation of workers happy and working for you.

As a virtual staffing agency, we deal with the same things as you do day in and day out. We’re not immune to the caveats of Generation Y. We deal with the unique issues of this generation through increased back end staff which checks in with and coaches our virtual assistants regularly. We also take great pains to make good matches between clients and virtual assistants and quickly offer to change assignments if it doesn’t “feel right” for the virtual assistant.

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Yes, this (generation’s issues) results in a higher turnover of virtual assistants but no higher than what you’d experience in the bricks and mortar world. In many respects we shield our clients from the impacts of turnover by quickly locating new help, interviewing and screening for the right skills and attitude. But even as a virtual staffing agency, we still can’t change a generation or their attitudes so we can’t stop the turnover – we can help our clients get through the turnover.

Even with a high-turnover generation, companies can still benefit from all of the pluses of virtual assistance and virtual staffing. The cost savings over hourly in-office staff still exist; office politics is still absent; the speed of bringing in additional help is still present; the benefits of not having someone sitting in your office holds ground; start up capitol needed (desks, computers, phone lines) of hiring help is not a concern; and ultimate flexibility still exists.

In many ways, hiring virtually is a great way to deal with the issues businesses must face with this generation. This generation wants flexibility. Working virtually offers the ultimate in flexibility, which helps keep the generation happy. Virtual staffing fits this generation like a glove and is one of the best ways to put them to work for you.

Team Double-Click? provides virtual assistance for small and home-based businesses. Visit Team Double-Click?s Web site at http://www.teamdoubleclick.com or click on the banner:

Are you still wondering what in the world a virtual assistant can do for you?

Are you still wondering what in the world a virtual assistant can do for you? Below you’ll find some helpful suggestions. Keep in mind that our VA’s have been through an extensive interview and training process: Only about 30% of interested VAs are added to the Team Double-Click? roster following their interviews. In addition, our real estate assistants undergo extensive industry-specific training, so they know how to support your growing real estate business! And, we offer you two free hours to train your VA on your specific needs!

What can our virtuals do?

General:

• Enter your leads into your CRM (contact relationship management) program.
• Set/cancel/confirm appointments.
• Work with Excel spreadsheets to organize your leads and other data
• Work with MS Word to create mail merges and process mailings.
• Answer incoming calls
• Return phone calls on your behalf
• Type and send letters or contracts
• Make travel arrangements for you.
• Call for quotes for other services. (Any other services: rental cars, moving vans, tailoring, etc. hatever you may need at the time)
• Order services on your behalf
• Write business and task procedures for your business
• Write business manuals for your business
• Screen and answer the your emails
• Prepare newsletters for your clients
• Plan events or meetings
• Arrange and put together teleclasses, seminars or teleseminars
• Proof read your written materials
• Transcribe his or her meetings or speeches.
• Order books and CDs
• Schedule personal tasks such as car maintenance, vacation plans
• Personal concierge services such as ordering groceries, gifts, holiday gifts, birthday cards, etc.
• Arrange cook outs or meetings
• Mail outs such as postcards or letters for marketing purposes
• Preparation of manuals
• Record outgoing phone messages
• Record inbound call answering messages
• Post flyers on message boards
• Maintain Website & Updates (personal and other websites; Craig list)
• Check Voice Mail; Return calls
• Photos (edit and list on websites)
• Research
• Managing Your Virtual

No successful business owner can afford to micro-manage. If you need to micro-manage, you should find someone to sit right next to you in your office. If you can refrain from micro-managing and allow your admin to think and do on her own, you’ll have no problems managing her from a distance. Through proper candidate selection, proper training, clear and concise instructions, and the daily reporting mentioned earlier, there should be no serious problems.

And with Team Double-Click?, we do all of the screening, selection, and preliminary training so you and your virtual can hit the ground running. We don’t stop there, however. Each admin is assigned a Team Double-Click? manager who monitors her progress and communication with you. We step in when needed to correct mistakes and get you and the virtual back on the right track. And this doesn’t cost you a dime.

Team Double-Click? provides virtual assistance for small and home-based businesses. Visit Team Double-Click?s Web site at http://www.teamdoubleclick.com or click on the banner:

Does A Down Market Mean You Need To Downsize Too?

Let?s just say it ? the real estate market is down and the mortgage industry is, well, a smidge messy right now. It?s no secret. The question is how to survive during a poorly performing market. What do most companies cut first when things start to slide? If you answered ?marketing? or ?staff? you nailed it.

Why is that though? It?s human nature to cut the ?extras? when business is rough. Marketing is usually out the window first because the bills are typically huge. Followed shortly by staff members that may be dead weight or not as good as they should be. And quite often, especially for small businesses, the owners decide there?s a lot more they can pick up and work on; things that the assistant used to do. There are a couple of great lessons here. There?s downsizing and there?s taking yourself out of the market.

Let?s first explore the idea of cutting off your marketing efforts in this down market. If you chuck your marketing, doesn?t that just cut off your nose to spite your face? A down market is precisely when you need marketing. If not for your marketing efforts, how will those few buyers in the market know about you when they?re ready? Maybe it?s time to look at some old fashioned guerrilla marketing tactics and free marketing. Yes, I said free. Of course we all need to spend some marketing dollars from time to time but what happened to all of the great free opportunities out there? Let?s explore some of them.

Article submissions. One of the greatest things about the ?net is that you can almost instantly become the expert in your market/community/area by writing and submitting articles. A quick search on the ?net will unearth dozens upon dozens of places to post your articles. Of course, that?s what I?m doing right here ? writing an article which my virtual assistant will post to as many free article submission sites as she can find. What does this do? It positions me as an expert. It sends links back to our company web site (thus increasing search engine rankings). It tells people we exist. It drives traffic (and hopefully customers) to our web site. It keeps our marketing alive and fresh. AND ? it doesn?t cost any more than my time to write the article and my virtual assistant?s time to post. Cheap!
Blogging. Wow, what a beautiful thing blogging is. Similarly to article submissions, blogging gives you a voice, makes you an expert, sends links back to your web site, and allows you to engage in conversations with potential customers. Another quick search on the ?net will unveil a hoard of free blogging sites.

Partnerships. In a down market, aligning yourself with complementary companies that can funnel business your way becomes paramount. Do me a favor; sit down and think of the products and services that compliment your business. Don?t look for specific companies just yet. Look for the kinds of products and services. Maybe they?re roofers (who may know that someone really needs to sell), maybe plumbers (who may also know who needs to sell or someone looking to buy), lenders, banks, and so on. Once you have this list together, find all of the companies who fit each category. In other words, find all of the plumbers in the area, all of the roofers, etc. Once you?ve got that list together, call them up and see how you can work together. Can they send referrals to you if you send referrals to them? Which of the plumbers can send you the most referrals? Then start setting up partnerships with these folks.

Co-Advertising. Are there complementary companies (such as the ones you found while seeking partnerships) whom you can work with to create and implement advertising pieces? Advertise both of your services in the same ad and cut advertising costs?

Teleseminars. Check your contacts both locally and nationally ? if you can be creative enough about your presentation topic, you can come up with dozens of things to discuss that others would like to hear about. Solicit your contacts for speaking engagements on teleseminars and plug your wares while you?re there. If you can?t get onto someone else?s teleseminar, do your own. They?re very inexpensive to produce (check out www.freeconferencecall.com) and you can invite your market area to the teleseminar to share some great bit of information. You?ll be the first person they turn to when they?re ready to buy. Try a teleseminar on ?improving the curb appeal of your home to get it sold more quickly? and I?ll bet you?ll have local sellers flocking to listen to you talk. Try ?getting the biggest bang for your buck in a buyer?s market? and the buyers will be knocking down your doors. Be sure to grab their contact information so you can use them as leads!
Radio and TV. Even local real estate companies and agents can position themselves as experts in their field with the local media. Send them your press releases, your articles, your information. Keep working to land a spot or two on the local news and you gain immediate credibility and recognition in your market.

Podcasts. Podcasts can work similarly to teleseminars in that you can solicit to be a guest on others? podcasts. However, you can also put up your own podcasts. Again, cheap, easy, and great lead generators. Check out www.talkshoe.com, which is a great, free podcasting site. Share similar information and think about topics similar to those we discussed for teleseminars.
These are just a few ideas for free (or almost) marketing that you can do even during a good market. But especially in times like these, you can focus on free and cheap marketing tactics without spiting your face. Be creative and I?ll bet you can think of dozens of others.

Firing your staff. They?re always the next to go after marketing. Sure, getting rid of dead, useless weight is always a good idea ? even when you?re prospering. But during lean times you need to be sure that you?re getting what you pay for from the help. What disturbs me, however, are comments I?ve heard recently like ?hired help is a luxury we cannot afford right now? and ?well, I?ll just do a little less selling and take over the administrative functions again? and then there?s ?I was an assistant once, I can surely do it again and save a few bucks.? Wrong, wrong, all wrong! I?ll tell you why.

The best place for you during lean times is out in front of clients and making money ? not setting up drip campaigns in the mailing software and directing phone calls. And how can you set up all of those referral partnerships if you?re preparing post cards for mailings?

So do get rid of those who aren?t helping your business ? that?s good advice even in the best of times. But keep those who are producing for you and who are making your job (selling and getting in front of partners) possible.

What about hiring a virtual assistant? Bricks and mortar produces huge wastes just by its nature: you pay for time you don?t use, you spend more on gasoline, as does your assistant, you pay rent (or a mortgage), you heat the place, and you electrify it, and so on. Have you considered going virtual? Believe me, it can be done. We were once a bricks and mortar business in a previous enterprise. But after going virtual, we?d never go back. Think about it: you only pay for what you use, you don?t pay rent, you don?t have to heat the office, you don?t have to provide desks and computers. You save tons! One of our virtual staffing clients, Jo Ellen Nash, recently said, ?Having virtual assistants handle the majority of my administrative paperwork (and me!) has cut over $100,000 from my payroll and given me better skills and talents, better accountability, better organization and better stability in working from two locations, now in Vail, Colorado AND (as of April this year) Naples, Florida!? Check it out ? you can downsize without downsizing how much your company accomplishes. If you need to downsize, do it smartly ? keep the staff that?s working well and replace the others with virtual assistants.

As this down market cycles through and works itself out, please, don?t let your marketing fall to the wayside and don?t downsize what your company accomplishes! Just go about it a little differently.

Team Double-Click? provides virtual assistance for small and home-based businesses. Visit Team Double-Click?s Web site at http://www.teamdoubleclick.com or click on the banner:

Living Life on Our Terms – Living Virtually

How often do you wish to be freer? Living in America, we?re afforded more freedom than in any other part of the world. We can go anywhere we want without asking permission of our Government. We can hold any job we want for anyone who will hire us, as long as it?s legal of course. We can marry or cohabitate with anyone we want ? gender regardless. We can start and run businesses. Our freedom is one of the most coveted rights we have as Americans. Yet we tie ourselves to offices and desks and towns and schools and so on. Why? Why not enjoy more freedom? Why be tied to all of those things if you don?t have to be? Why wish; why not do?

Almost 14 years ago, Jim, my now husband and business partner and I were married in the beautiful little mountain town of Ouray (pronounced you-ray) in Colorado. I?d seen the town and fallen in love with it when I was a teenager and I somehow convinced him to get married there, site unseen. Well, he fell in love with the town too. Since that day 14 years ago, it?s been our dream to live in Ouray. For many years we couldn?t do it. We were tied to typical corporate jobs, desks, land line phones, a business that at the time wasn?t mobile, and all of the other things we Americans tie ourselves to. It just wasn?t possible.

Last year, while vacationing in Ouray, it was nearly unbearable for us to leave. Our business was mobile (I?ll get to that in a minute) so our biggest problem with making a cross country move like we were proposing was school for our daughter who would be entering 6th grade that fall.

We started looking into home schooling and any other options we could find. We found an online (virtual) grade school, middle school, and high school called Christa McAuliffe Academy http://www.cmacademy.org. We enrolled our daughter and started making plans to move to Colorado.

So in addition to our business being ?virtual? our daughter?s school is virtual as well. Heck, we?re a totally virtual family! We could work and school from Timbuktu if we wanted to, if they had internet connection there of course.

Back to our business being virtual. What many of you may not know is that Team Double-Click? is 100%, purely, totally, and undeniably virtual. The company has but two employees ? me and my husband and we both work from offices located in our home. Because we both talk so much and so loud, yes, we have separate offices or I?m afraid we?d strangle each other! As for our ?core staff? as we refer to them, they?re located all over the country and work from their home offices. They?re contracted ? not employees and they work in places like Florida, Missouri, California, Idaho, Wisconsin, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Arizona, and many other states. So true to what we preach as a virtual staffing agency, we are 100% virtual.

To facilitate the virtual atmosphere and the virtual working environment, we utilize virtual phone systems, virtual fax systems, online accounting programs, online CRM programs, and rely heavily on email, instant messenger, and the telephone to communicate and carry on our day-to-day business. Editor?s note: If you?d like more information on the components Team Double-Click? uses to facilitate their virtual office, such as fax and phone systems, check out Gayle?s article Setting Up Your Virtual Office at http://virtualassistants.lakho.com/2008/08/setting-up-your-virtual-office/.

So what all of this virtual stuff means is that we can very easily go to conferences and work while we?re away ? provided we have an internet connection. When we were in the process of moving, we kept in touch by stopping along the way to check email and of course we spoke to our staff via cell phone regularly. We can easily vacation most any time we?d like (though we tend not to because we enjoy our work), again because we can connect anytime via the internet and phone!

The virtual aspects of our life are so liberating and so freeing because we can literally pick up and go anywhere, anytime we want to without worrying about phones going unanswered, about who will open the office, who will do this and who will do that. Our virtual-ness also made our move from Wisconsin to Colorado a breeze!

If you?re at all hesitant about making your company ?virtual?, or working virtually, any one of our core staff members, virtual assistants, or clients would be happy to tell you how great and how freeing it is. Additionally, our core staff are more than happy to help you take the steps to make it happen and show you the ropes. I encourage everyone to start enjoying the added freedom you deserve as an American and work virtually!

About the author:
Gayle Buske is the co-founder, president and CEO of Team Double-Click?, the country?s foremost virtual staffing agency. As the head of a virtual staffing agency with over 22,000 virtual professionals in its pool, Ms. Buske is uniquely qualified to aid clients? growth through virtual outsourcing as well as speak to the ins and outs of the industry. Gayle enjoys spending her free time with her husband, business and life partner, Jim, their daughter Madison, practicing Yoga, reading, hiking, flower gardening, and playing with the family?s three dogs and two cats.

Team Double-Click? provides virtual assistance for small and home-based businesses. Visit Team Double-Click?s Web site at http://www.teamdoubleclick.com or click on the banner:

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