The change in attitudes of young employees pushes Ukrainian employers to favour mature workers. Experienced workers aged 45+ are now in demand, KP.ua reported.
Younger Ukrainians live in the virtual world
Ukrainian adolescents and young adults aged under 30 tend to live in the virtual world, Natalia Michkovskaya reports.
Looking to fill a junior position, bosses are faced with unrealistic expectations of the young candidates who are confident that working should be fun and wages must be high, while offering little to nothing in terms of experience and skills.
Discrimination by age, which used to be a fixture in the Ukrainian labour market, is disappearing, experts report.
There are several reasons for that.
- There are fewer people in Ukraine of the working age: Labour migration as well as depopulation (more deaths than births) are to blame.
- The population of Ukraine is aging: People live longer. This is why a worker who is 45 is no longer seen as ‘old’.
- There are only 10 million people in Ukraine who are officially employed and pay taxes. All 42 million of Ukrainians are being provided by these 10 million workers, so there is not a lot of choice for employers in terms of the available workforce.
Besides, Ukrainian bosses complain that the young generation of workers tend to live in the virtual word of social networks, which is always exciting and something’s happening there. The job responsibilities they are supposed to fulfil seem mundane compared to that.
“Ghosting” is now not only the phenomenon of the dating world but it also happens at work. Employers report that new recruits come to their first working day and go for a lunch break to never come back — without a warning. When contacted, the new employee explained that he didn’t like the job and found it boring, and no longer wants to work for the company. They don’t even collect their belongings but ask to mail them!
Ukrainian employers are frustrated with attitudes of young workers who now practice ‘ghosting’ when hired for a job, not just in dating.
Working should be fun
The young generation views the office as some club where they should never be bored, HR managers report. Today’s 25-year-olds are not trying to build a career or achieve goals, they don’t make long-term plans. For many of them having a job is just a way of spending time between weekends, Vitaly Mikhailov from ‘World Stuff’ recruitment company pointed out.
The most important things for them are their hobbies, interests, and entertainment, which can be yoga, crafts, clubs, or social networks. The job is not #1 priority for them, not even the second or third. It’s hard to motivate people to work when it’s not in the list of their priorities, HR managers complain.
For young workers in Ukraine career is not one of the top-3 priorities in their lives, HR managers complain.
Experienced workers 45+ are in demand
The generation aged 45+ had grown up in the Soviet Union and has different work ethics, this is why they are now in demand to fulfil positions in Ukrainian companies.
- They are professionals with a set of skills, who know how to communicate. There is no need to teach them basics.
- They are responsible. They come to the office and leave on time, ready to work overtime. They don’t take sick leave as much as the young workers.
- They are loyal. The younger generation considers working for a year for the same employer as ‘long’, while workers 45+ don’t see anything special in working for the same company for decades.
- Mature employees have strong work ethics. They need the job and want to have it. Mature workers have families to feed and parents to look after, so they value having a job.
- Mature employees enjoy working. They find fulfilment in doing the job, unlike the young personnel, who prefer spending time in the virtual world.
It is indeed a problem for employers to hire stuff for junior positions. The younger generation prefers to play and not to build a base for settling down and starting a family, as people used to do decades ago. Now it’s all about ‘living in the moment’, which trains many young people to have the attention span of a gold fish.
Quite possible, the same reasoning is applicable to online dating. Mature ladies are much more trustworthy and goal-oriented than the ones under 30. What do you think?
Read also:
- Why so many young Russian women are divorced?
- The giant dilemma of online dating
- Russia: Jobs for college graduates are hard to find
- Working as a translator for a marriage agency in Ukraine
The same is true in most European countries, new generation in most cases good for nothing while full of expectations and demands.
But the article miss a point:
Workers over 40 have more to lose:
They have less international mobility (both based on education, language skills), and probably they have a family/ house to take care of.
They must be hardworking, if want to keep up.
A 20 years old easily leave because work is not fun, make a social media chanel, and earn from ads/ followers/ patrons more than from work.
I’d like to say that this problem is actual for Russia too. Employers in our country prefer to hire older and more experienced workers than young and ambitious one. There are also some laws in our country that protect older people and recommend to hire them. As a result, it becomes more difficult for young people to find a job.