Generation Y in Asia

We are doing more work in develoing Asian countries helping companies with their human resource mangement.

I’m noticing a number of interesting strucural and cultural characteristics. We work with several tertiary educated generation Y Asians (including 1 Doctorate student) whose role is to translate our concepts and ideas about employee management into ideas relevant for Asian companies. They are living in my home town (somewhere in the western world) but travel regularly back to their home country. We also have an Asian office with a some highly competent local geberation Y staff who do the local marketing.

As a borderline baby boomer I find my Asian generation Y coworkers fascinating to work with different to the locals. The first thing I’ve had to get used too is the respect the pay for my views and opinions because I am of an older generation. Its taken a little while for them to realise that my views aren’t always valid or correct – or for that matter any more valid than my own. After considerable discussion and problem solving I started they started to feel confident to state their views and ideas – which of course were rich with perceptions and understandings, to the extent that we have developed some exciting solutions.

My fascination wasn,t that they had ideas, but rather the evolution of their understanding about how we behave locally to solve problems in our business. It wasn’t so much the act that they had to learn our ‘participative’ approach to business, but the speed at which they responded to my encouragement. It wasn’t that they didn’t have good ideas (heir ideas were clever and perceptive). Rather, it was about learning the cultural norms. In the west, we expect that generation Y will not only have an abundance of opinions, but that they will actively seek a work environment where they can pursue them.

Working with western companies in the Asian market it is not unusual to find they treat their Asian employees second to staff recruited from their homeland. Whether this is the result of discrimination, egotism or reflects a lack of sophistication and vision, the bottom line is that they are missing out.

No wonder so many of the new educated generation Y business stars from the developing Asian nations stars want to join Japanese, South Korean or Singaporian companies.