By Generation Y or Millennials in the Czech context I mean people born between early 1980's and early 1990's. Czech millennials were still influenced by the era of communism in their early childhood but further on moved towards the global technologically interconnected environment. There are many studies about the Generation Y. But how is generation Y in Czech like?
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1. The last generation that played outside
Till mid 1990's it was completely normal to see groups of kids running around the towns, villages, playing outside hide and seek, exploring the neighborhood. Technologies as cell phones, PCs any smart gadgets existed only to a very limited extent and only as tools used in offices.
Kids' world was outside, that was their playground.
2. Combination of eastern and western mindset
While growing up, Czech millennials were influenced by the mindset of the regime before 1989. To meet someone meant to go and meet the person face to face. A telephone was used only in urgent situations. When anything stopped working, it was completely normal to repair it. Things were reused as much as it was possible. People knew names of all their neighbors, colleagues and schoolmates.
After the change of the regime, Czech millennials were the first generation that learnt language and started to travel globally in mass. Unlike the previous generation, the millennials did not fall in love with the American dream so deeply. They already got a chance to see both the old world of their kids as well as the reality and the dark side of the western life style.
Czech millennials became far more open-minded than previous generations, learnt to work hard in order to succeed as well as did not fully jump into the commercial and consumption based one-use life-style.
3. Working is an important part of life but not the only part
This is a key measurement not only for millennials in Czech but globally. With this generation, topics as work-life balance, good personal relationships, spending enough time with own family became a key pillar of life. For the previous generation X having a good job and enough money, keeping social prestige were the most important values. In the Czech context the previous generation were called "Husak's kids" as they were born in the era of Husak's presidency called "normalization". Husak's kids wanted to move forward but the regime was suppressing any too new ideas. The new era after 1990's allowed the generation of Husak's kids to finally start doing what they liked. The possibilities were infinite, huge enthusiasm was partly covering the complete lack of experience. Husak's kids became Czech first businessmen with all good and bad sides it brought in 1990's following their American dream of own business, big money and in some cases extravagant life style.
Czech millennials come to the stage after this first huge wave of new Czech businessmen. They already got a chance to study, to travel, to explore and experience living as well as working in different environment, in different countries. The job is still an important part of their life though they were the first ones who brought up topics as work-life balance, time for personal development, enough time spent with family onto the stage.
Czech millennials start balancing the original western values of hard work and big money followed in 1990's with the traditional values of good relationships, quality time with family and happiness.
4. Social responsibility is not a buzz word any more
In the Czech Republic, the environment protection was not an existing topic before 1989. It was completely normal back then to take a car and drive it onto a bank of a lake or into a river in order to wash it. It used to be normal to build heavy industry factories in the clean environment such as mountains. After the revolution and later due to the entrance to the European Union, many environmental friendly and sustainable steps were forced to be taken, so people and companies did so.
Millennials are coming to the stage with a completely different mindset. They break up this mindset of forcing business at the first stage and along with that playing some social responsible policies.They just do it the other way around. Generation Y simple cares about the planet, about the nature. Therefore millennials are starting to build their life style in alignment with these natural resources and and not because it is a rule but because they want to do so.
5. Czechs millennials explore the world and later come back home
Thank to the boom of internet and interconnection within the whole world that millennials naturally became part of. It is easy for them to find out what is happening in the other side of the world, to read and study what they are interested in or also to travel and physically explore the world. Millennials are no longer following the model of picking up the field of study, find a job and keeping this one work field throughout their whole life. They prefer exploring and trying new things.
Czech millennials were the first generation that was as whole allowed as well as educated to go and study and work abroad.
In the global context, millennials often become international people moving among the countries. In Czech generation Y go and explore the world but later often come back home and settle down in the Czech Republic. Why is that? Because we as Czech millennials want to work hard but at the same time we want to provide good and friendly environment to our families, we want to spend time with families and we want to be on the move but not rushing constantly. I guess, this is actually a great news for the Czech Republic. We as Czech millennials got the knowledge and experience from abroad, which we are using in our daily life in a way how we run businesses, how we work, how we care of the environment. At the same time we remember the key values we learnt in our childhood that we want to further give to our children. How often does it happen to you abroad that you would be singing in a pub :-)?
I am looking forward to exploring how we as Czech millennials will further develop in the coming decades in our private, family, work as well as public life.
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