Welcome to the experience economy. This is where Gen Ys live—and it's what shapes much of how they think.

Just as the act of unpacking your latest i-device is an 'experience' that Apple has deliberately created, so too must the experience of a workplace be deliberately arranged and delivered on a daily basis to attract and retain Gen Y employees. The flow of information, the ease and quality of connections and collaboration, the facilitation of self-expression and feedback—these are all experiences that directly impact the way Gen Y feels about their workplace, and their place within it.

When it comes to the employment experience, a large percentage of this ‘delivery’ falls in the lap of the manager / supervisor—and that's often where the trouble really starts.

If you are a manager, here's a question you should be considering: how are you managing this experience within your department / team? Getting this 'right' for younger workers isn't always easy. It often requires the challenging of specific traditions and entrenched ways of operating, but it's non-negotiable if building a talent supply chain across this age group is a genuine goal.

Another aspect of the Gen Y mindset is that they are heavily informed and influenced by the opinions of those that they trust—and this increasingly includes total strangers! It's not naivety that drives this, it's their ability to, and experience of, connecting with people based on interests and similar ways of operating.

Our research—empirical, experiential and anecdotal—suggests that Gen Y may have the most highly refined BS detectors ever. In fact, one of the Gen Y's we spoke to said this about the way her generation interacts with the proliferation of information sources and messages from advertisers, employers, media and everything in between: "We are so overwhelmed with different sources of information, particularly advertising, that we tend to ignore it as much as possible. Being able to get information from a variety of sources has taught us to not trust the direct source, or only talk to one person. If we hear it from multiple places, we are more likely to believe it."

Employers ignore this advice at their peril.

Gen Y's are far less likely to believe what you say unless they can verify it independently via other sources, and trying to hide, ignore or gloss over negative media coverage or customer feedback about your organization's activities or products is a sure fire recipe for disengagement and distrust. Gone are the days when the CEO could put out an internal statement (written by the PR department) about an issue in the media and expect the workforce to accept it. Organizations now need to engage in dialogue about negative media coverage or contentious internal issues—'motherhood statements' and platitudes simply will not suffice.

Gen Y makes it their business to seek out people they trust and relate to. They don't always just assume this will be their direct manager. They take personal responsibility for finding information and people through their networks—and this can sometimes be misconstrued as undermining authority, or an inability to work within assumed processes. But often, that's not it at all.

'Thinking' and 'experiencing' are what Gen Y's are good at. And sometimes, this just makes everyone else a little bit uncomfortable. However, if you allow them to use their strength in this area, it just might lead to an innovative approach or experience that your internal team would have never considered without them. Diversity of thought and diversity of networking is what they bring to the table.

This post about Generation Y belongs to the new white paper, Don’t Manage Me,#understandme. You can download a free copy here.