When I was a little girl in the 1980s, my questions to my father often would begin, “Back in the olden days…” I have no idea where I got the term, “olden days,” from (maybe Little House on the Prairie?), but the idea behind these questions was always, “So, back in your day, how did you do things? What did you experience?”
My father, who grew up in the late 1930s and 1940s, would go on to explain phenomena such as calling the family car “the machine,” the refrigerator the “ice box,” and the deliveries of bottles of milk that would arrive at his family’s door.
Now that I’m a middle-aged person watching people 25-plus years younger than me enter the workforce, I am reminded of these conversations.
When I started my first full-time, salaried job in February 2003, I would get to work at 9 a.m. or just before and would never leave at the strike of 5 p.m. I usually would leave at, say, 5:15 p.m. or 5:30 p.m. I was hardly burning the midnight oil, but I also didn’t think of my full-time salaried job as a day laborer, who is paid on an hourly basis, might. I left at approximately 5 p.m. and never before, the exact time dependent on where I was in the process of completing my work. The thought that I might leave as early as 3:45 p.m., even if I arrived at 8 a.m., would never have occurred to me or any of my co-workers.
Yet in today’s world, I have observed entry-level employees who feel free to do just that—they start packing up as early as 3:45 p.m. and are out the door by 4 p.m. This is done in our post-pandemic, hybrid workplace in which the boss is often not on location with employees. There is no sense of the need to go above and beyond, or at least give the appearance of doing so, that many of us had as new employees back in the “olden days.” Is this a changing norm? And if it is, what does it say about how workplace behavior is changing, including the attitude of today’s entry-level employees?
How Are Ideas of Professionalism Changing?
I found a report with survey findings from Clarify Capital last week that shed light on how ideas of professionalism have changed.
One finding that jumped out to me: Nearly 40 percent of Americans would accept a pay cut of 4 percent of their annual salary to move into a position with less stress and responsibility. This preference for less stress, and I would presume, less interest in advancement, seems related to the change in entry-level behavior I am witnessing.
Whereas a person just starting out in their career 25 years ago would be eager to show how hard-working and diligent they are, entry-level employees today have no such concern. They have been taught perhaps that quality of life is more important than career advancement or success, and maybe they assume that everyone else—including the more senior employees who manage them—shares this value. They may be shocked to learn that some of us share this value yet still frown on an employee high-tailing it out of work as soon as they possibly can.
Has the Workplace Become “Less Formal”?
Along with the emphasis on stress reduction measures, entry-level employees appear to present themselves in less formal ways than those of us did back in the day. According to the survey, 3 in 4 Americans said the workplace has become less formal in recent years.
I was shocked a few years ago, when I noticed an entry-level employee wearing not just jeans, but fashionably ripped jeans, to an industry conference. I did not expect her to be in a suit, as even many of us older people no longer wear suits to conferences. But ripped jeans seemed a bit too far down the work wardrobe spectrum. As you might have guessed, back in the early aughts, I had a whole wardrobe of pantsuits to wear to conferences, ranging in color from light purple and pink to white and black. What I didn’t have in my conference wardrobe were ripped jeans. I was horrified! The entry-level employee was not my charge and did not ask my opinion about her clothing, so I didn’t feel it was my place to remark on what I perceived as the lack of professionalism in her wardrobe choice. Would you have said something to her or to her boss?
Where’s the Entrepreneurial Spirit?
When I was an entry-level employee, I won what my then-employer called its Entrepreneur Award. I would not just do the work that was assigned to me; I would come up with ideas for additional pursuits. I didn’t wait to be spoon-fed by my manager. I would just jump in and get the work, and beyond, done. I thought that’s what all entry-level employees who wanted to make a good impression and advance in their careers did.
Today, I have noticed that entry-level employees wait to be spoon-fed with detailed instructions and handholding from their managers. I find it disappointing, both from the perspective of the entry-level employee who has so little independent initiative and from the perspective of the manager who feels the need to micro-manage these young people.
Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised then that only 31 percent of survey participants chose “positive attitude and work ethic” in response to the question, “What does professionalism mean?”
How does your organization define “professionalism”? And how do you communicate your definition of professionalism to new hires during the onboarding process?