Summary: Is the under-30 crowd just a bunch of brats with a glaring sense of entitlement? Why aren’t employees more loyal to their employers? Which comes first? Company loyalty or employee loyalty? Find out why I think a lot of businesses are still getting it wrong.

I was pointed to an article recently talking about how the under-30 crowd is the “dumbest” generation because of the Digital Age (which I very much disagreed with). One thing mentioned in the article is something I’ve heard a lot – younger employees feel a sense of “entitlement” and have no company loyalty.

Do you agree?

I don’t.

But more importantly, why do you think some companies have issues with employee loyalty? Why would the younger generation, specifically, be less loyal to an employer than an older employee? I have a few thoughts on that:

1. While my generation has been growing up (and some in it still are), we’ve seen companies treat loyal employees like garbage. We’ve seen long-standing loyal employees lose their pensions due to corporate green and scandals. We hear and see the horror stories about how the biggest companies in the world (can anybody say “Walmart?”) treat their employees poorly (and I’d say that’s an understatement). We, for the most part, haven’t witnessed employee loyalty from companies. When you grow up in that environment, people shouldn’t expect that you’ll want to stay with a company for 30 years, when many companies have shown they don’t value you (you won’t get the promotions, you won’t get the raises, and if they screw up you’ll be one of the first things to get cut).

2. I think this young generation is highly entrepreneurial – perhaps moreso than any previous generation. Why? Because it’s much easier to start a business (just look at how easy it is to freelance online these days for example). In other words, we do feel entitled in the sense that we refuse to put up with a lot of the corporate crap our parents and grandparents were forced to deal with. Why? Because we don’t have to to take it – we can go off on our own far too easily (and many of us do it successfully).

3. I think when we hear about companies having problems with company loyalty, we forget that we don’t always hear about the good cases. There are plenty of companies out there going out of their way to keep employees happy. They don’t have the same issues with loyalty that other companies have, because they work on employee relations and keep employees happy. I think a lot of companies assume a paycheck is enough – it’s not. If someone is going to give you a third of their day, five days a week (or more), and you want them to care about your business, be loyal, and have an interest in helping you grow, then you’d better be sure to take care of them.

In other words, here’s how I look at it: if you want employees to be loyal, you have to give them a reason to be loyal. Employee loyalty from the company needs to come before company loyalty from the employees. Employee relations is just like public relations – the company is responsible for creating an image and atmosphere, and that’s what directly influences how their public (in this case employees) will feel about them.

Do you feel differently?

Summary: Maybe your business has grown, or maybe you just realize you could use some specialized help (such as in keeping the books). No matter the reason, you’ve decided that it’s time to hire some help. Should you hire an employee or an independent contractor? Let’s look at some pros and cons of each.

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When deciding whether to hire an employee or an independent contractor (such as an independent consultant or freelancer), you need to keep in mind that there are legal and administrative issues tied to each option. Here are some of the things you should consider when making the employee vs independent contractor decision when hiring help for your small business:

Employees (Pros)

• When you hire employees (full-time or part-time), you can exercise greater control over them and how they work. For example, you can require that they work on-site during specific hours, and directly under your supervision (or the supervision of someone else).
• You know that the work is being done directly by the person you hired rather than subcontractors.
• You can have someone there full-time dedicated solely to your business if you need that.
• Employees can become more invested in your company and wanting to see it succeed.

Employees (Cons)

• Hiring employees costs more. You have to pay benefits, a portion of the Medicare and Social Security taxes, workers’ compensation coverage, etc.
• You’ll need to spend more time training and supervising an employee.
• There are administration issues to consider – you have to deal with tax withholdings for example.

Independent Contractors (Pros)

• You can hire contractors for short periods of time when you need specialized expertise, or you’re not confident that the business growth will yet support a full-time employee.
• Because they’re specialized professionals who work independently, you don’t need to devote a lot of time to managing and supervising them (as a matter of fact, you really can’t for them to legally be classified as an independent contractor).
• Contractors are less expensive to hire than employees – for example, they pay most of their day-to-day business expenses.
• They can work from their own place of business, so you don’t have to have space available for them.

Independent Contractors (Cons)

• You can’t legally control them like an employee – such as where, when, and how they actually get the job done, as long as the job gets done. For example, if you hire a freelance writer, they can choose to do your writing in the dead of night or on weekends if they prefer – you can’t tell them that they have to write for you during certain time frames. Their responsibility is to meet deadlines.
• They’re free to work for other clients in addition to you – that may very well include competitors or related businesses. For example, if you run a pet store and you hire a freelance copywriting to write the marketing copy for your website, you can’t stop them from writing marketing copy for other pet stores down the line.
• You can’t “fire” a contractor the way you can with an employee – you’ve entered into a contract, and are tied to that contract unless they breach it in some way.

Before deciding to hire an employee or independent contractor for your small business needs, find out about the legal differences where you live (in the US, for example, the IRS classifies your workers as one or the other). If you don’t find out the rules before making the decision, you may find yourself with heavy penalties down the road that far outweigh the benefits you received from hiring contractors (in other words – never hire someone as a “contractor” if you plan to treat them as an employee).