Everyone in your workforce under 30 is Gen Y.

We keep hearing how this generation has fundamental differences in attitude to work to the Baby Boomers and Gen X. So we’ve been experimenting! We’ve observed groups of Gen Y in our lab doing performance reviews and scoured the available literature to answer the question: When it comes to performance management, do businesses need to do anything different with Gen Y?

1. A sense of entitlement.

Imagine you grew up watching only reality shows like Big Brother: you could easily believe that fame comes simply from being yourself. And if you always got a Certificate of Participation regardless of whether you won or lost at sport, you might not realise just how competitive the real world is.

Much has been made of Gen Y employees having a sense of entitlement – a belief that they will move up the corporate ladder as a matter of course. Of course it’s not true, but the good news for employers is that smart under-30s (the people you actually want driving you business into the future) wake up to this reality very quickly. They do best when presented with a very clear set of milestones they need to achieve to progress their careers. And they need to be reminded that achieving a milestone does not guarantee progress, but not achieving it guarantees no progress.

2. Instantaneous gratification.

When an under-30 posts something to their wall on Facebook, they expect a response from someone next time they check. In contrast, most performance reviews involve completing forms then waiting weeks for manager feedback, or submitting manager reviews to HR with no response expected. Social Media users expect small feedback often (good and bad), and many are motivated more by frequent brief feedback than by occasional detailed feedback.

The upshot? First, ensure that your performance reviews are designed around getting immediate feedback to users (automate this as much as possible). Second, remember that while a formal annual review is useful to some, frequent micro feedback (a one line email or even just a or !) provides much more continuous motivation.

3. More tech savvy equals less tech savvy.

It’s popular to think of Gen Y as being better with technology, but actually what they are used to is technology that works, and works intuitively. The idea of a system that has to be learnt is foreign to Gen Y. So if your performance management system is online: focus on being intuitive.

4. Worklife balance? Worklife blur!

I am friends on Facebook with most of my Gen Y employees. I read their blogs and tweets. I understand their motivations more clearly than I would otherwise, and lots of peoples’ motivations have nothing to do with work! What are the real implications of this? We don’t know yet, but it’s definitely better to know your staff than not. Keep on top of it.

So there you have it – four things that we take into account about Gen Y when developing systems at the Sonar6 Lab, and hopefully they are useful to your business too!