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This came through in today's edition of Workforce Management - an HR ezine [www.workforce.com]. I thought it might be interesting to communicators working in the arena of corporate culture and engagement.
No Lie: Future Workers OK With Cheating
An ethics poll points up disturbing findings for hiring managers.
By Garry Kranz
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Generation ‘Why Not?’: Exactly what are young people learning prior to entering the workforce? Namely, that unethical behavior is justifiable in pursuit of their goals. According to Junior Achievement and Deloitte, nearly three-quarters of teenagers say they are fully prepared to make ethical decisions once they land a job. Yet nearly 40 percent of the same group “believe it is sometimes necessary to cheat, plagiarize, lie or even behave violently in order to succeed.”
Hiring people who condone this behavior poses a threat to corporations’ integrity and reputation, researchers say. The Junior Achievement/ Deloitte Teen Ethics Survey collected responses from a diverse group of 725 U.S. teens ages 13 to 18. Among the more alarming findings for hiring managers: Nearly 30 percent of teens claim that it is unfair for employers to suspend or fire employees for unethical behavior that occurs in their free time. Nearly the same percentage can’t decide (26 percent).
Similarly, nearly six in 10 teens surveyed oppose the right of employers to base hiring and firing decisions on material that employees have posted to the Internet. And in a finding that has implications on the honesty of future workers, nearly half the teens say it is OK to illegally download music online without paying for it, and 5 percent say it is acceptable to steal items from stores.
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Apart from the stat about hiring/firing based on Internet posts, I find this study hard to accept as concrete evidence of a looming shift in workplace ethics. These are teenagers! Not the most scrupulous demographic.
This study feels similar to one asking toddlers if they plan to chew on their future employer's property.
Right after reading Sue's post, I found this article in my email inbox: "Teens Have Their Stuff Together" (http://blogs.mediapost.com/research_brief/?p=1672). Here's part of their findings:
When teens were asked to choose from a pair of related, yet conflicting statements, Jane Buckingham, President of the Intelligence Group, reviewing the responses, notes that "The answers to our questions have surprised many in the marketing community and have caused them to rethink how they need to appeal to this demographic."
When asked if they would rather get a college degree' or win American Idol, 90% selected college degree. And three quarters of the respondents would rather have friends than lots of money.
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So I'm wondering who to believe, and thinking that perhaps it's like most of us humans: we're a conflicted mix of good, bad and in-between; and perhaps someone asking similar questions to teens in the '60s might have found some responses horrifying and others reassuring. Or maybe we should collectively snub studies? :-P I mean, after all, 95% in Sue's study said that stealing was wrong. That's not such a bad statistic, eh? And more than half think they should pay to load their iPods and Zunes. In all, the majority seem to share the ethics that employers want. Maybe we'll be okay.
I don't buy the stats hook, line and sinker, but as the parent of teens, I must say that this survey doesn't surprise me. This is a generation whose parents are more likely to sue the school for disciplining their children, no questions asked, than back the school's discipline policies. Friends who are also parents of teens have jokingly called this the "no rules generation," because they tend to be so savvy on where authority ends insofar as they must respect it. This is an off-shoot of households with very loose rules (putting it mildly). If you don't trust statistical info, how about anecdotal? I can't believe some of the stuff I've seen over the years.
I think this is kind of a silly stat. I mean 1) you usually develop quite a bit in college and 2) many of these teenagers won't even go to college and thus on to professional careers. I myself, although far from a teenager - am a Gen Y-er and would classify myself as quite honest. I even shy away from downloading songs illegaly
Argh, I hate these studies that indicate anything Gen Y does or does not do. You cannot stereotype people based on their age. Period. I don't automatically assume anyone over 50 is just cruising to retirement and unable to turn on their computer. All I ask for is the same respect.
And I'm willing to bet that most people, as teens, make sweeping generalizations of right and wrong or good and bad that we no longer stand by. Give these survey respondents 10 years. They'll have different views. High school is not the real world. Things you do in high school do not necessarily reflect what you'll do on the job.
I am not too far out of my teens, even having siblings that fall into this category. Teens not even ten years my junior seem to just expect that they will be given the things they want - the jobs, the grades, the keys to the car - without having to earn it. I won't trust the statistics from the study, after all if they are such liars then how can we assume these test results to be accurate? But observation seems to back up some of these findings. And as others have said, if they don't have to live by rules or have consequences now, it is going to be hard to change that when they hit 22.
A local talk show host asked his audience which would disturb them more - their child cheating on a test or their child smoking a cigarette. Overwhelmingly, these parents chose the latter.
What can you expect of kids when this is the message they get from their parents - that good character matters less than refraining from doing silly, stupid things that, for years, have been the province of your typical teenager and hurt nobody but themselves.
I recall my sixth grade teacher saying that, if we ever had the impulse to cheat, to think about how it would feel to learn - as you went under the anaesthetic - that your surgeon had cheated his way through medical school.
So, to get back to the question - I favor a "no tolerance" approach. Something that is clearly unethical is grounds for firing. This expectation should be crystal clear to employees in today's environment, with all the in-service training employees are required to do for compliance with federal and state law.
I think the problem is that many of them think nothing of cheating. It's almost like they don't even think it's wrong. When professors at the college I used to work for require the use of online software to detect Internet plagiarism, it's a sad state of affairs.
I find the problem to be more like this: Gen Yers are a succeed-at-all-costs generation. They think little to nothing of doing a good job. My dad always said "Anything worth doing is worth doing well." I don't see that attitude in today's college students.
It's a biproduct of the multitasking generation. They are so focused on having 15 extracurricular activities on their college application that they don't stop to think it might be better to do two things if you exceed at them.
-------------------------------- Kelly Russ
Association of Corporate Contributions Professionals
Communications, Marketing & PR Manager
Teenagers aren't adults. Their thinking processes are still developing. The prefrontal cortex that mediates ideas of right and wrong (what pshcyologists once called the superego) is still unformed.
That's why you don't hire kids for the big jobs that require judgment and a functional moral compass.
On the other hand, it wasn't kids who perpetrated the subprime mortgage crisis that helped send world financial markets into chaos. It was adults who supposedly had a working sense of right and wrong, but did some very risky (and sometimes illegal and/or immoral) things. Why? because the could, because the regulators were largely looking the other way.
So, while you certainly have to carefully oversee the kids you hire, moral rectitude has to be instilled, and watched, all the way to the top.
Well, Google seemed to be having fun with the idea that cheating might be okay....their April Fool's joke when you landed on gmail yesterday offered a "custom date stamp," so you could give your email message any date you want. "Miss your anniversary?"…"Late with that financial report?"…"You never need to be late again!"
That's a pretty cynical statement on the current collective mindset. After all, Google wouldn't have thrown that practical joke out there if they didn't think most people would think, if only for a moment, that it was a possible "product."
This younger generation must have no ethics. I mean, how long will it be till stories surface about kids running for student body president and telling their classmates about dodging sniper fire while running across the front lawn to visit a neighboring school?
While reading these post, I kept thinking of the posts on Gov. Spitzer, getting caught with his pants down...Not a Gen Yer, yet a cheater himself.
I think many Gen Yers see people cheating and accepting it as a norm. So, no, I don't think we communicators are ready to address the cheating factor. If so, Mrs. Spitzer (morally) should have ran the second she found out, but on a PR/communicators stance, Gov. Spitzer needed her to stand by his side.
