Our Gen Y’s are Growing Up
27th June, 2009 | 11:49 am | By Graham Crombie - Audit and Assurance Services, Partner and Chief Executive

I have been spending a bit of time recently surfing some professional body websites to catch up on trends that are happening around the globe.

A recent survey caught my attention on the American Institute site – www.aicpa.org .

Their young professional network had been talking to members to gain a perspective on how they were seeing the recession. 

When asked the broad question “how do you feel the economic situation has impacted on your personal and professional life” 27.6% indicated that their job security had been negatively impacted, 16.6% perceived a loss of business at their firm and 13.5% felt there were fewer career opportunities.  While this was interesting the revealing information started to flow when they dug a little deeper.

Only half of the respondents felt that their career path had been affected by the economy.  I was surprised this was so low.  What was happening here was that people were looking at the opportunities in front of them and taking their careers in new directions. This is a real challenge for traditionally structured firms.

These questions were at the higher level but my real interest was in how people were responding.

When asked how they were dealing with the economic slow down 74% indicated they were cutting personal expenditure, 56% were building a rainy day fund, 45% were working longer hours or taking on more responsibility to impress their employers and 22% were pursuing additional educational opportunities.

I suspect that these results are consistent with New Zealand young professionals if slightly slower in showing through.  My observation is that the true impact of the slow down has not quite reached some staff members in the profession.

A key for me was the question around what kind of silver linings or opportunities people saw in the current economic situation.  Significant answers were:

• Falling stock and house prices provide greater investment opportunity
• Opportunity to improve fiscal responsibility
• Greater demand for accounting services is providing opportunities
• Opportunity to improve quality of life

On the professional side the responses to this question included:

• When the economy turns there will be lots of opportunity
• If we can help clients now, when times are tough, they are going to remember that when times get better.  They will know we are really looking out for their interests
• The recession has provided a chance for us to step back and look at the big picture
• Smaller firms have an opportunity to reach out to new clients

These answers are very consistent with the series of presentations we are doing at present around “Surviving and Thriving”. 

I often hear “older” business leaders say “these Gen Y people will have to change their attitude now times are tough”.  I have the view that their ability to be flexible and take their careers in new directions will in fact be a great strength in these times and that employers who are looking to use the recession as a way to bring people into line are in for a rude shock.  I think the feedback from the AICPA young professional group bears this out.  We need to harness that attitude and transplant it into our business thinking.

As always, keen to hear from you on graham.crombie@ph.co.nz

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Last updated: 30th June, 2009 | 2:12 pm