The audience consisted primarily of boomer women—which isn’t really a surprise, given the statistical weight given to boomers and to women in leadership positions in fields across the board.

But what really caught my attention was this. At the end, there was time for questions. The first inquiry proved to be so galvanizing, we never got to question two. “Should I let my young staff text message during work hours?”

The audience sprang to life, consumed with the issues of motivation and retention in regards to Gen Y—the generation born between 1980 and 1995—who are also the largest generation ever, beating boomers by a couple of million strong. Before I give you my response, let me tell you, as an aside, that one of the best things about working at Fleishman-Hillard is having access to micro-niche experts in a broad range of specialities. Having just collaborated with our Youth and Mobile Marketing practice group on an internal webinar titled “The Great Generational Power Play”, I was delighted to have a genuine opinion to share on the subject.

In brief, this generation of workers has entered our organizations with a sense of entitlement about how they want to be treated at work. (Not unlike how we boomers felt at the beginning of our own careers.) And one of their expectations is that they live technologically integrated lives. The lines between personal and professional life have pretty much blurred, as Gen Y’ers want to be networked in to both friends and business associates—which often overlap—continually.

Is this a problem? Some of the medical administrators argued that if a front desk person was immersed in Facebook while the elderly patient wilted in the attempt to get attention, this was indeed a problem.

Of course, we don’t want anybody to die while Gen Y fiddles away on their TREO. But in my opinion, this is not a generation-wide issue, but rather, an issue from time immemorial. Some people, of all ages, get caught up in their own worlds and forget about doing their jobs. It’s called poor service.

But many of the Gen Y’ers I’ve encountered have proven themselves to be adept at multi-tasking their personal and professional lives and paying attention to their responsibilities, even to the point of letting an IM go unanswered for the moment.

I think back to when boomers entered our workplaces, and balked against rigid rules and authorities. To the degree that organizations responded and became more humanistic and flexible, boomers—and the organizations they joined—thrived.

We are at a similar moment of change and transition. My opinion is to go with the flow and let Gen Y venture onto new, fully-integrated turf while keeping the expectations about service and performance high. We can always deal with performance issues on an individual basis, while philosophically approaching the notion of a changing workplace prepared to be pleasantly surprised.

Carol Orsborn