I work for a large corporation. It may well be that my older colleagues either don’t know, or don’t remember how old I am, because many often share things with me like, “Young people today just don’t have any sense of loyalty to their employer.” I often speak with frustrated recruiters who find the ideal candidates for a position, only to have to fill the position once again in a few short months after the candidate has left the company.

Why does Gen Y have such a hard time staying in one place? Have we earned the reputation for being disloyal that our older colleagues and superiors have bestowed upon us? How should corporations deal with this difficult talent pool?

The Loyalty Myth

The first question I want to tackle is the one about loyalty. On the one hand, I look to my father who got a job with a company after finishing school, and has been employed by the same company, through two separate rounds of acquisitions, for over 30 years. On the flip side, the majority of my friends who have been out of school for over two years, have had more than a single employer. Myself included.

But that doesn’t tell the whole story. The accusation that Gen Y is disloyal to its employers actually gets me angry. If I look at my peers who have had multiple jobs, those who chose to leave a job are far outweighed by those who were forced to leave a job. Yes, I know it’s a bad economy, but explain to me why a generation that knows well the feeling of being given the boot by an employer, or has watched as those just a little older than them have suffered the same fate, should feel any loyalty to those same employers?

Like many companies, my own went through a round of layoffs last year. The business rationale for the layoffs did not bother me. What bothered me was the response that I heard from colleagues who had been there longer than me: “Eventually, it’ll happen to all of us.”

Seriously?

Gen-Yers everywhere are hearing these kinds of responses to layoffs. Is it any surprise then, that when presented with a better opportunity elsewhere they take it? The alternative, apparently, is to stick it out with one employer who will eventually show them the door one way or another.

Opportunities for Gen Y in the Corporate World

The good news is that it’s still possible for Gen Y to find a happy home in the corporate world. I know, because I’ve done it.

The first step to making Gen Y feel at home in a corporation is to realize what is important to us. Big paychecks are nice, but what we really want is freedom and flexibility. To a corporation, things like flextime, workshifting, and tele-commuting are buzzwords. To me, those are tangible benefits and things I look for in a company, and in a lifestyle. If you want an idea of just how important freedom is to Gen Y, just take a look at the success of people like Tim Ferriss, who has built a career around the idea of lifestyle design. Freedom is important to everyone, but Gen Y sees the opportunity to actually achieve it thanks to the tools of the digital millennium.

My generation can take comfort in knowing, though, that companies are evolving. I look at something like Best Buy’s Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE), and I think to myself, “Yes, a big company that gets it!” Hours worked, doesn’t mean results delivered. When you calculate results, and not hours, you take the first step towards opening up flexibility, because you will invariably realize that results come when people are working on their own schedules, not yours. Gen Y already knows this, we’re just waiting for the corporate world to catch up.

How will they catch up? Easy, the companies that don’t get it will continue to lose employees to those that do. The companies that do will foster environments that attract young, dynamic, intelligent Gen Yers. Those are the people that will become the leaders of tomorrow (or even the leaders of later on this afternoon, at the rate some are climbing the ladder).

Once we’re in leadership positions, you can be pretty sure that we’ll set up work environments that attract the kind of people who like to work the way we do. Eventually, in a survival-of-the-fittest-capitalism-at-its-best-kind-of-way, the companies that attracted the young talent will begin to eat the others for breakfast.

So, if you’re a corporate leader, and you’re struggling to find or keep young talent, maybe you should talk to the kinds of people you’re trying to attract and evolve your structure to what they’re looking for. Don’t try to change Gen Y. We won’t change. You need us. You need to change.

And by the way, if you read this far and the only thing you’ve taken away is that Gen Y is cocky, then you’ve missed the point entirely. Enjoy being eaten for breakfast.