Gen-Y City : Attracting, retaining and embedding Generation-Y Talent in European Cities

The network, which is led by the city of Poznan in Poland, presently includes a number of European cities all of whom are interested in exploring what they can do to better attract, retain and integrate Generation-Y Talent in their cities.

As the Mayor of Poznań, Mr. Jacek Jaśkowiak, explains, “Poznan is a city with a population of over half a million, one in five of which are young people, many of whom are drawn to the city to study at one of the many excellent universities we have here.”

“However, similar to many other cities across Europe, we are coming under increasing pressure to ensure that we can attract, retain and integrate the best young talent in our city. Young people today are increasingly taking risks venturesome, they have a strong entrepreneurial and tech-savy technological mind-set and think nothing of jumping on a plane to pursue a particular career opportunity.”

Mr. Jaśkowiak’s views are borne out by a study conducted by Oxford Econometrics, entitled Global Talent 2021: How the new geography of talent will transform human resource strategies (2012), which found many cities across Europe were forecast to be suffering from a talent deficit by 2021, with many likely to need to recruit from countries such as India, Indonesia, Colombia, South Africa and Brazil – all of whom were likely to be experiencing a talent surplus.

Mr. Jaśkowiak explains. “Numerous studies show that young people want to develop their careers in a more flexible manner, outside the traditional work paradigms of the older generations. The Y Generation tend to value flexibility over a traditional career and many are turning to self-employment as a means to achieve this goal.”

According to EY’s study ‘The EY G20 Entrepreneurship Barometer 2013 – the power of three: governments, entrepreneurs and corporations’, entrepreneurs supplied 67% of all jobs in Europe in 2012 and between 1980 and 2005, 65% of all jobs created in the US were jobs that entrepreneurs created for themselves, most of which were freelancers.

Across the world, the globalization of markets, changing demographic trends, technological developments, new customer needs and increased competition are radically affecting how cities need to think about talent attraction and retention.

As someone who has travelled extensively across the world– to study, for work and to pursue his own sporting interests - Mr. Jaśkowiak has been quick to recognise the potential implications of these changes on the city of Poznan and many other cities across Europe.

“We cannot only focus on trying to attract people to fill vacancies in companies in our city, but should instead focus on trying to attract individuals who can contribute to the growth of Poznan, regardless of whether they are freelancers or working for a multinational corporation”.

“We need to promote flexible working arrangements, where young talent can build their career ‘horizontally’, while working as freelancers, or for several employers at a time, or employed on temporary contracts”.

Mr. Jaśkowiak continues, “increases in the number of so called ‘micro-multinationals’ could have profound effects not only on the world of business, but could also further impact on migration patterns across Europe and affect the vibrancy of inner cities. Cities that want to attract these smaller firms run by talented entrepreneurs need to be globally connected, both through physical and virtual infrastructure and in their mind-set”.

In response to these issues, a number of authors believe the disciplines of urban growth, international talent attraction and foreign direct investment could converge, so that recruiting a new employee becomes more like attracting an individual with entrepreneurial drive or attracting an investor. The locations that manage to do this will get a head start in the global game of attracting and retaining talent.

Iwona Matuszczak-Szulc, the Network Manager for the Gen-Y city Project is clear why URBACT provides an ideal opportunity to explore these issues, “URBACT will enable Poznan to work with our partner cities across Europe to better understand how we can adapt and change to address these issues”

“In addition to being able to learn from each other, and see first-hand how cities are dealing with these issues, this Action Planning Network will enable us to develop an Action Plan for improving the situation in each participating city.”

“So far, partners have indicated their ideas for improving the situation in their respective cities including developing incubators for micro-multinationals; enhancing the environment for attracting young entrepreneurs; reducing bureaucracy; opening up information about contract opportunities; and improving the delivery of enterprise and entrepreneurship skills in schools”

“Over the coming months, we will be working with partners to extend the network and to explore what else we can do to improve the attraction and retention of Generation-Y talent in our respective cities. We are interested in hearing from any other cities that want to work with us on this subject, or that have any specific experience we can learn from”

The Gen-Y City project lists its current partners as Poznan, in Poland; Daugavpils, in Latvia; Klaipeda, in Lithuania; Granada, in Spain; Genoa, in Italy; and Wolverhampton, in the UK.

For more information about the Gen-Y City Network, contact Iwona Matuszczak-Szulc by emailing Iwona_Matuszczak@um.poznan.pl