By Julianna Antunes*
Yes. I’m going to write this in the first person. I’ve got some generation X in me, a bit of Generation Z, but I am in fact part of Generation Y.
X, Y, Z. Where are we (young people who have just started entering the workplace) going to find ourselves in this alphabet soup? What do we want? What are our goals and values? What do we expect from the businesses that hire us?
As generation Y, we’ve grown up with very high self-esteem. At the same time, we’ve grown up with the weight of responsibility, which comes from decades and decades of excessive waste committed by our brothers, sisters, parents, grandparents, etc. This makes us fully aware of our responsibility to change the way we produce, consume, and relate. If we aren’t careful, there won’t be any generations left to tell this story.
Research conducted by MTV and the Akatu Institute last year, talks about corporate sustainability, sustainable development, and the responsible consumer. The study reveals that global warming, pollution, water shortages, and social inequality, are just some of the important issues that concern young Brazilians today.
Until recently it was common practice to wash the driveway, flooding it with filtered water, or burn fallen leaves on the ground. This behavior doesn’t make sense to our generation. According to the study, 66% of respondents would call attention to or reprimand, someone throwing trash on the ground, wasting water, or wasting energy. 52% have planted at least one tree in their lives.
We didn’t learn the values of sustainable development in the household. We learned this in school, through the media, and even on the Internet. Even though these weren’t necessarily values our parents taught us, they are extremely present in our professional lives, and have a great influence on the way we deal with the corporate world. Sustainable development enters the generational mix, sometimes making it challenging for businesses to deal with the young employees, who will actually dare to put the business and some of its untouchable practices and procedures “in check.”
American businesses specializing in petroleum and gas, for instance, have encountered difficulties in recruiting the best talent, because this generation has a very negative image of the industry. According to an Accenture study, 75% of MBA students from top U.S. schools would consider earning salaries 10 to 20% lower, in exchange for working for a socially responsible corporation.
In Brazil, it’s still not possible to obtain concrete data on the influence sustainability has on young people’s career choices, even more so at this time, with the high rate of unemployment for recent graduates. But even with this economy, I ask my generation, would you like to work for a business who doesn’t care about the environment, who doesn’t respect the consumer, or the communities around which it works? Would you be satisfied working in this sort of environment, in a business that doesn’t maintain a good relationship with its manufacturers and doesn’t listen to what its employees have to say?
*Julianna is a journalist, who majored in Journalism. She is currently pursuing graduate studies in Corporate Social responsibility. She is working on developing corporate sustainability and green business. To learn more, check out her blog: www.sustentabilidadecorporativa.com
