Generation Gap: Managing the Teenage Employee

so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] 50 of our workforce to teenage kids sometimes they don't think they're on this planet they get the radio turned on full blast you try to tell them something and they're not listening because they're listening to the music i'd say about 10 of them really want to be here really want to work for a living the rest of them rather be off playing somewhere doing something else you know now let's see the boxes all mixed up the box is separate as well well the advantages of working with teenage kids is they're relatively inexperienced so you can pretty much mold them the way you want you know right from the get-go it's like working with a clean slate you know but i don't really think they're very serious about what they're doing [Music] armand has a serious problem relating to his teenage employees and unfortunately he's not alone there are natural barriers that exist between adult employees and teenage workers and their causes are fundamental for most managers their jobs are their careers their futures their lives for most teen employees a job is an extracurricular activity of lesser importance than school sports and socializing in order to better understand one another we offered managers the opportunity to discuss their differences with teenagers uh would you be willing to tell teenagers face to face how difficult it is to manage them tell them straight out what i thought yeah i'm going to do that what is the most important thing in your job is it the paycheck no what is it uh well i work in customer service and it might sound corny but the most important thing for me is to make sure that it gets done right and people leave people come up so mad and if they leave a little bit happier or if i make them laugh or even if they're frustrated it makes me feel good and that's the best one yeah that's i working at a supermarket i mean i'm just a bagger but but you have these conversations and the same people come in every week and yeah if it wasn't for the paycheck i wouldn't do it but it's not the most important thing we don't make that much money in our places why would we work there i personally feel that i work because i get the experience and it's fun to work the reason why i ask is because one of the hardest things i have to do is find what motivates my people to get the best out of them managers who work with teenage employees must find creative ways to keep them motivated and interested in their jobs we used to have a thing at the yogurt store where somebody who made the best yogurt cake would get a little bonus prize on their check or something but those things are they're neat i mean anything to help the employees i feel like there's some reason why they're there i find in my particular business i get a big kick out of it for one to take somebody and develop their potential into working with the kids we call them crew leaders they get more money they get another kind of uniform you know they get that responsibility then they realize that they have the possibility of developing into this kind of person if they're saying i trust you you can do this you feel good you want to do it because they trust you you don't want to let them down if you can sense they don't trust you you're well it's not important as important to get done what's frustrating is that you would want them to do better you want them to be good employees you'd want them to succeed in life they're going to have to work and pay attention to what they're doing eventually i just kind of like the process to happen a little earlier on so that when i get them i don't have to be their parents for teen employees new to the workforce proper training is of critical importance had no idea what's going on first day i was here basically they let let me loose i mean um i don't really understand what's going on i just do what you know what the other guys tell me to do and instead of going along making mistakes and you know learning from mistakes why not learn ahead of time so you don't make mistakes but i see the people that are rushed through the training that don't get that people sitting down and just explaining and going through the things we went to their quality isn't as high they need the nurturing and i know you're not their parent but you're about their boss and i think there's a lot of similarities people that manage other people don't have time to be their parents you know they got other work to do they show them how to do the job i say this is what's expected of you i come back later how long do you take yourself a couple of minutes doesn't take long a couple minutes you have to show them you have to communicate with your employees if the employees have to feel comfortable you can't expect them to be experienced as a job and know what they're doing right away it's no big deal it's not an easy job it's not because you know it if you come with him the attitude well this is no big deal it's not you know then that's what you're going to get back you know if you give them two minutes you're going to get two minutes worth of enthusiasm i mean i've been in this business a long time and i love to take a young person that maybe has never had a job before bring them in and really show them teach them i do take the time to show them the job that i need to be done and i i also listen to them anything that they need they kind of talk to me it's imperative that teenage employees understand how vital customer service is it can make or break a business a lot of the teenagers don't realize the importance of the customer and don't always treat them as well as we think they should be treated they're not always is as courteous and polite particularly say to our elderly customers what you have to remember is that i don't pay your paycheck these customers pay your paychecks if they aren't in the store we're not going to hire you because we don't need you one of the things that really bothers me and i find it happening more and more is when an employee is carrying on a conversation with an either another employee or a friend and waiting on you at the same time i don't know if it's the way i was brought up or if it's just the way i personally expect to be treated but when the customer's there that's my focus of attention i mean i try and look you know is this a big person as a little person do i have to pack the groceries like can i pack them heavy you know are they on a bike do they need maybe one bag and i try and strike up a conversation with the customer the problem that arises is when the customers got a chip on their shoulder my particular business everybody wants what they want and they want it now i mean like there's nobody else in the world but me you know i gotta have this right now and something that i always have to be reminded of that my grandmother taught me a long time ago is how to bite your tongue you don't say anything this person is a real jerk wonderful just don't say anything because the more you fuel his fire the more it's going to come out and you're going to be the one who gets in trouble when all you had to do was be quiet the employees should be taught in a way to just keep calm like a doctor is taught to take the pain well an employee should be you know taught to take the pain also hopefully we as managers will back up our employees a hundred percent okay but only providing that you have done your job and treated the customer with respect what if there's somebody yelling saying i want to talk to a manager and you've done everything in your power to calm down you can't you call the manager up and instead of the manager talking to the customer and saying okay what can we work out and talking with the three of us trying to work something after this customer yells at me as much as i hate to say so the manager is wrong and i all i can say is the person made a very bad judgment some people don't have enough sense to realize that you deserve some credit also scheduling is a common problem for managers of teen employees many managers feel that teenagers aren't always dependable they have a lot of things they like to do on weekends and stuff and a lot of times they don't know in advance and they just all of a sudden they can't come into work and that happens quite a bit here one of my employees was doing this afternoon to work and he came in 15 minutes before he was on schedule to tell me he had to go to court and so he couldn't work so quite naturally this left me shorthanded to handle a shift and this is rather consistent with young teenage workers doesn't happen with adult students adults generally will call me and let me know that uh james i have to do this i have to do that and so i can't what about the manager's responsibility to tell their teenage worker listen you know i want a day in advance i think a lot of people you know the managers will not tell the um workers and listen this is what i expect from you where i work at the supermarket you're treated like an adult and i you know we have very little problem with people not showing up you know very little problem with people canceling out at the last minute um very little problem with any of the typical teenage problems that you expect to have because that's when you walk in when you when you sign up for this job you know you're signing up for a job where you're expected to act like an adult if a manager can't communicate effectively he or she faces an uphill battle teenage employees may require more specific instructions than adult workers interesting thing about teenagers is they don't read between the lines as well as an older type employee so basically all you need to do is just be a little bit more blunt you know this is exactly what i don't like about what you were doing and this is how i want you to change it and i'd say 99.9 of the time i do what i've learned from working with teenage employees is that you have to be very careful how you reprimand or praise them because they'll either get really upset with you or get a big head and start slacking off well the managers in this store are pretty reasonable but sometimes i think they're too emotional they let it out on the employees sometimes if i were the manager i'd try to talk to the employees more not be yelling at people to do this or to do that because that's what managers don't do they don't communicate they scream i think they have every right to yell if they want to yell even if you can talk about it that's fine but not right in the middle of the problem they should discipline you somewhere else you know they should take you aside you know when they when they don't you i mean you want to cry because it's so you're humiliated in front of all those customers and now you have to go help them after you've been yelled at if i'm wrong i want to know because i want to get it's important to me to get the job done right but i want to be told in the proper surroundings i have never corrected an employee on a sales floor number one i don't believe in it i think that you have some pride that you deserve to keep intact the next thing is once i've corrected an employee i expect to walk away and forget about the situation it's over with i've done my my job i expect them to follow up and correct whatever the problem is and i'll never refer to it again when communication breaks down when employer and employees stop trying to understand one another everyone suffers this one guy who plays a base in the rock band right and instead of doing his work he's got the radio on he's got enough full blast you turn the radio down every time i come in the radio is still on full blast it's almost like you know his clutch is slipping he's not really listening to to what i've told does he get the job done eventually he gets the job done yeah you're really unhappy with what he's doing and you really what he's doing doesn't meet to your standards why is he still working for you you have a problem with the amount of teenagers the number that you can find who can work for you and uh you have to you know use what you have it doesn't sound like it's that important because the guy's not doing it and he doesn't think it's that important to you if it is important to you like she said sit down and talk to him tell him it's important to you if you think about all the times you spent walking by saying turn the radio down it adds up and it the the product on the end i think will be 100 better if i had a situation like that where i walked by and turned down a radio once twice maybe three times that somebody better get the idea it's not going to go up again i take the darn thing away are you happy with your employees how do you feel because it seemed like to me that you don't like your job you don't like your job period i don't like my job yes yeah well you don't like the people you work with especially the teenagers because i've noticed you've been putting down because you teenagers you have why you know teenagers who work for me that are fine i'd say about one out of every 10. no you asked me i'm telling you it seems odd that that you know that only 10 of the kids who are working for you say are are good workers and the rest of them aren't any good everyone else has teenagers working for them and they're not they're not saying that only ten percent you know it can't be just the kids i've noticed and i might be wrong but from what i've seen you don't seem to listen to what a lot of people have to say when someone comes up to you if someone comes up to you with a problem do you listen to what they have to say or is it more of an attitude like listen i'm the manager you don't like you don't like when i say it doesn't matter what can you do to me instead of hey you know what do you have to say maybe you can tell me something that can help me work with you better and can help my whole entire job atmosphere i don't think it's you're trying hard enough if it's really important to you to just put them in a group and just say okay we we have conflicts or maybe we have conflicts we have all these things we want to get the job done how do you feel about your job just what we're doing here and i guarantee you that they will run they will talk and you might like not like some of the things they're saying but you have to let them know what they're saying isn't going to affect their job no i don't know maybe it's just me but i think that the generation gap that we're all talking about is incredibly overrated you walk in and you and you say well i've got 50 of my workers are kids and fifty fifty percent of my workers are adults a hundred percent of your workers are people there you go and you talk to them like people that respond like people a key to effective management is understanding your employees by overcoming age differences looking beyond stereotypes and by opening up channels of communication managers can increase productivity and motivation both teenagers and managers will learn something in the process well i learned a lot today from listening to both the managers and from you guys you talked about communication and motivation and i was listening and maybe i don't do enough of that that's possible i'll try to do more of that and maybe a group like this with my teenage employees maybe my adult employees as well wouldn't hurt couldn't hurt whether you're working with people that are 70 and 80 or you're working with people that are 12 and 13 no matter what you've got to work together you have to if you got to get the job done right no matter what age you are you're all there to do a job and you have to do it together [Music] that's all it [Music] they'll be takes best [Music] [Music] this generation [Music] this generation