I was interviewed yesterday by a reporter from the Houston Chronicle. She asked me an interesting question. It was something like, “Do the younger ‘gen Y’ layoff survivors react the same as older surviving employees?
One would think that with their expectations of many jobs and not signing up for life, they would be less affected by layoff survivor sickness than more “chronologically gifted” employees. What I’ve found is that their survivor symptoms are just as significant, but for different reasons.
The violation they suffer is not because of the disappearance of long term job security. It is that, for the first time for many, their sense of entitlement has been violated. This is the generation that grew up under helicopter parents and have rarely, if ever, experienced failure. The average GPA in most colleges is well over 3.0 and students get very upset if they even get a whiff of a C. When they are laid off or experience the threat of a layoff, it creates significant cogitative dissidence which quickly moves to layoff survivor symptoms.
Young, “gen Y” employees, too need managers who are competent to help them work through their survivor symptoms. They also need coaching in how to handle a harsh external environment from which they were previously inappropriately insulated.
