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Back in 1993, I began my first in-depth interviews with young people in the workplace. We’ve been studying young workers ever since. Based on what is now nearly 15 years of research, I am absolutely convinced that Generation Y has been much analyzed but largely misunderstood. Most of the so-called ‘experts’ have been simply reinforcing prevailing misconceptions about Generation Y. Here are the top 14 myths about Generation Y in the workplace and the corresponding realities: Myth 1: Gen Yers are disloyal. Reality: They offer the kind of loyalty you get in a free market—that is, transactional loyalty (whatever you can negotiate). Myth 2: They won’t do the grunt work. Reality: They are so eager to prove themselves they will do the grunt work or anything else. But they won’t do the grunt work, or anything else if they start to fear that nobody is keeping track of what they are doing and giving them credit. They are not about to do the grunt work in exchange for vague, long-term promises of rewards that vest in the deep distant future. Myth 3: They don’t know very much and have short attention spans. Reality: They may not have the same shared knowledge base that people with a certain level of education used to take for granted, but they walk in the door with more information in their heads and more information available at their fingertips than anyone ever has before. They think, learn and communicate in sync with today’s information environment. Myth 4: They want the top job on Day 1. Reality: They have no interest in taking their time to “get a feel for the place.” They want to hit the ground running on Day 1. They want to make an impact. Myth 5: They need work to be fun. Reality: Gen Yers don’t want to be humored; they want to be taken seriously. But they want to learn, to be challenged and to understand the relationship between their work and the overall mission of the organization. They want to work with good people and have some flexibility in where, when and how they work. Myth 6: They want to be left alone at work. Reality: If they actually care one bit about the job, they want managers who know who they are, know what they are doing, are highly engaged with them, provide guidance, help them solve problems and keep close track of their successes. Myth 7: They want their managers to do their work for them. Reality: They want managers to teach them. Myth 8: They don’t care about climbing the proverbial career ladder. Reality: Gen Yers will follow a self-building path made up of learning, relationships, proof of their ability to add value and lifestyle flexibility. Instead of climbing a ladder they are making a tapestry. Myth 9: Money and traditional benefits don’t matter to them. Reality: Of course, money and benefits matter to them. They want to get the best deal they can get. In fact, they are usually quite savvy about comparing what each employer offers. But money and benefits are only a threshold issue. If you offer money and benefits that are competitive with other comparable employers, then you can keep the conversation going. Myth 10: Money is the only thing that matters to them Reality: If they are asking for more, what they are really asking is, “What do I need to do to earn more?” Once you meet the threshold of competitive money and benefits, Gen Yers care about five other things: schedule, relationships, task choice, learning opportunities and location. Myth 11: They don’t respect their elders. Reality: They do respect their elders. They are closer to their parents than any other generation has ever been. But they want respect, too. Their parents, teachers, and counselors have always treated them with respect, so they feel they deserve respect from their managers, too. Myth 12: They want to learn only from computers. Reality: From computers, they want to learn stuff that is easy to learn from computers. But, they absolutely need the human element to do their best learning. They learn best from a combination of the human element—coaching, direction, guidance, support, shared wisdom—and the powerful capacity of menu-driven information systems to guide them through the tidal wave of information available at their fingertips. Myth 13: It’s impossible to turn them into long-term employees. Reality: You can turn them into long-term employees. You’ll just have to do it one day at a time. Myth 14: They will never make good managers because they are too self-focused. Reality: They make perfectly good managers if you help them learn the basics and then practice, practice, practice. Bruce Tulgan is an internationally recognized expert on young people in the workplace. He is the founder of RainmakerThinking Inc. (www.rainmakerthinking.com) and the author or coauthor of numerous books, including recently released “Not Everyone Gets a Trophy: How to Manage Generation Y.”

The nation's small businesses are squarely in Washington's crosshairs - targeted for more rigorous, more painful scrutiny by both federal tax enforcement officials and the nation's auditing standard-setters.The first whiff of the shift in increased enforcement to smaller business came last summer, with a new study by tax researchers at Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse that discovered that the number of federal tax audits targeting small businesses with between $10 million and $50 million in assets increased by 29 percent from 2005 to 2007. Among the smallest companies - those with assets under $10 million - Internal Revenue Service investigations increased a whopping 41 percent.

As the Financial Accounting Standards Board tinkers with amendments to its Statement 140 and Interpretation 46R, the FASB staff has issued a staff position that expands disclosures about corporate involvement with variable-interest entities and transferred financial assets.The FSP is a stopgap statement, and will likely become part of the more extensive amendments now being deliberated.

One of the many problems the ongoing financial crisis has brought to light is the fact that generally accepted accounting principles do not necessarily give investors all the information they need to foresee the perils that a company faces. And though auditors have to certify that an entity is a "going concern," they do not have to note that the concern is going over a cliff.Eleanor Bloxham, chief executive officer of the Corporate Governance Alliance, a governance advisory concern, said that the problem lies in the failure of financial reports to report a crucial fact: a company's actual financial condition.

We have a perennial puzzle we just can't explain to our satisfaction.Here it is: Why are managers so willing to go overboard in product development and promotion, yet so blissfully content in doing the least required when it comes to financial reporting?

Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Doug Shulman has announced guidance for Ponzi scheme victims and their tax preparers. The guidance, which Shulman emphasized is not specific to the Madoff case, is in the form of a revenue ruling and a revenue procedure.

Each generation grew up fearing something different. For Boomers it was lack of security; for Gen X it was lack of success, and for Gen Y it's a fear of not finding passion.Laurel Papworth spells out the differences in her blog postabout what generations hope and fear and how they are motivated by those feelings. http://socialmediatoday.com/SMC/79966

Each generation grew up fearing something different.

Mary Lloyd says that retirement is simply not for old folks, anymore! In fact, she is out to change the concept that retirement means sitting in rocking chairs, watching sunsets, and playing shuffleboard, with the big night out every week consisting of a bus ride to the bingo hall. To young people, that seems as attractive as a long, slow root canal without Novocain. Lloyd is the author of Super-Charged Retirement from Hankfritz Press (www.mining-silver.com), and her view is that retirement doesn’t mean retreating from life, but rather, embracing it and all the things that drive one’s passions and fuel one’s fire. “The current version of retirement doesn’t work because we are living too long to be satisfied with a life that is focused primarily on leisure,” says Lloyd. “To make this stage of life meaningful, it needs to be shaped according to the values and preferences of each individual. That’s not as easy as it sounds and we need more resources to help us find the right things to create a satisfying life once we are old enough to retire.” Her advice doesn’t come from studies or data, but by walking the walk. By the time she was 47, she was working as a division manager for a Fortune 200 company, and found retirement a financially feasible option. So, in 1993, she left her job to embark on her “last” career, which was as a fiction writer. Given the tough ladder she had climbed in the business world, she didn’t think this next phase of her life would be difficult. After trying everything from a multi-month world cruise to deploying to Texas with the Red Cross in the aftermath of Hurricane Rita – with a few adventures in between – Lloyd finds herself singing a different song in 2009. Her message is simple: the current approach of retirement doesn’t work. Her tips for her baby-boomer brethren include: *The 100 percent leisure model of retirement (“the Golden Years”) is just a marketing spin for “get out of the way.” *We need some kind of work to thrive once we retire, even if we don’t do it for pay. Retiring doesn’t mean we have to stop making a difference. *By this time in our lives, each of us has a unique set of skills, talents and abilities. We need to mesh that with a personal sense of what’s important to define our own individual sense of purpose. *Living through our sense of purpose is as essential as breathing. Once we lose that, we lose the ability to make the choices we need to thrive. *Much of what we blame on aging is really the result of mindset and lifestyle decisions. It is within our capability to change and alter those elements of our lives, and master our destiny, rather than be a slave to circumstances. “The RV model might work for some, but most of us need a goal to work toward to feel worthwhile,” Lloyd says. “To retire well, we need learn how to include that and still relax and have fun.”

The tiny European countries of Liechtenstein and Andorra are two of the latest tax havens to succumb to pressure from international authorities to share information about assets hidden in bank accounts.