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For those out there who need translation, that’s how Generation Y, to which these 20-somethings all belong, might ask “What’s up?” in a text message.

And this meeting was all about translation. “Strategies to Connect With Baby Boomers” was the title of one of the slides. Its advice? When the boss comes in to complain that the young team is “spending too much time text-messaging each other and listening to iPods,” it is just not the best time to explain that you have to “leave early to meet your volunteer commitments.”

Summer is the season of culture shock in the working world, when the old guard comes face to face with a next wave of newcomers, and the result is something like lost tribes encountering explorers for the first time.

Add to this the favorite fact of human resource managers everywhere: this is the first time in history that four generations — those who lived through World War II, Baby Boomers, Generation X and Generation Y — are together in the workplace.

Managers tell stories of summer associates who come to meetings with midriffs exposed, baring a belly ring; of interns who walk through the halls engaged with iPods; of new hires who explain they need Fridays off because their boyfriends get Fridays off and they have a share in a beach house. Then there is the tale of the summer hire who sent a text message to a senior partner asking “Are bras required as part of the dress code?”

“They have an attitude toward work that looks like laziness and looks like impatience,” said Janice Smith, who leads the Ernst & Young seminar, carefully putting the best light on Gen Y qualities that are flummoxing managers, “but they don’t understand that’s how it looks.”

There have always been overconfident 20-year-olds, just as there have always been elders to say, “When I was your age. ...” Perhaps poetically, the last group to upend the working world with its ambition and drive are now looking down from the C-suites at their children, Gen Y, who are as single-minded in their search for balance as their parents were in their quest for success.

Surveys over the last few years have found that this group is looking for work that includes a “flexible work schedule” (92 percent, according to a Harris Interactive poll), “requires creativity” (96 percent) and “allows me to have an impact on the world” (97 percent). And when the polling firm Roper Starch Worldwide did a survey comparing workplace attitudes among generations, 90 percent of Gen Yers said they wanted co-workers “who make work fun.” No other generation polled put that requirement in their top five.

So the de rigueur summer event at many companies now, as much a part of signing on as the human resources forms and the ID card, is a seminar designed to close this generation gap. At Arrow Electronics it is “Generations in the Workplace,” while Michelle Marks, an expert on organizational behavior at George Mason University, calls hers “Managing the Challenges of the Gen X and Gen Y Work Force.” Aflac has “Generational Differences.” All are less than two years old.

Much of the purpose is to teach Gen Y the basics, which have often been neglected along the way. “They all have amazing résumés,” said Mary Crane, the founder of a Denver-based consulting firm and part of a new crop of experts teaching companies to navigate generational conflicts. She has been traveling the country “taming” Gen Y at workplaces from the law firms of Dewey Ballantine and Simpson Thacher, to the Orange County Employee Benefit Council.

These young employees, she said, had to overachieve to get through the most competitive college admissions process in history, so they don’t feel particularly inclined to pay their dues. “They have climbed Everest and excavated Machu Picchu,” she said, “but they have never had the experience of showing up for work at 9 a.m.”

By LISA BELKIN
Published: July 26, 2007