For the first time in its company history, Mazars, the global audit and advisory group, has conducted a quantitative survey of the work expectations and aspirations of its Generation Y staff worldwide.
These Generation Y survey respondents were born between 1980 and 1995, representing an astonishing 80 per cent of the group’s total workforce of 64 nationalities in 71 countries across five continents. If this is the case, it explains why the Gen Y demographic is the subject of such intense study.
Entitled The Y Revolution?, this huge online survey addressed the group’s talent pool in their 20s and early 30s to establish their attitudes and aspirations as the fastest-growing demographic group within the Mazars organisation and in the global marketplace.
The Gen Y demographic profile, sometimes known as the Millennials, is an emerging block of consumers who have been identified by insurance and marketing companies in their bid to capitalise on this huge demographic group.
Considering that they represent 50 per cent of the world’s population, this is hardly surprising. Gen Y-ers represent an emergent adult population that is exerting more and more influence as a demographic in their role as consumers and in the workplace. Three key characteristics identify this group: their vast numbers, their expected longevity and their hyper-connectivity.
The Generation Y survey is yet another project of major proportions, like gender equality and networking, that Mazars has undertaken in its quest to address the issues and concerns of the marketplace that are crucial to the group’s knowledge acquisition and global strategy and planning. This study outlines the work that remains to be completed to measure up to Gen Y’s expectations, regardless of country or continent.
Mazars’ corporate objective is to move the organisation forward by identifying areas of change. This has been triggered in part by the fact that, for the first time in the company’s history, Mazars has integrated Gen Y staff at partnership level. More than that, the group seeks to better understand this generation if today’s staff is to steer the next generation of Mazarians as part of its own leadership role. This survey represents an undertaking that reflects an uncommonly keen corporate eye on the future by the group not found in the more traditional audit firm.
The expressed attitudes of the survey by Gen Y staffers to the workplace and their work colleagues provide valuable insights for company decision-makers to incorporate key findings into the organisation and to shape that organisation in the decades to come. Findings, for example, show that the main life objectives of Generation Y staffers is to achieve a balance between their professional and private life (28.5 per cent) and living life to the fullest (27.3 per cent). Gender equality, too, is a major challenge for the company, according to 77 per cent of Mazarian Gen Y-ers.
Many companies find it difficult to respond to this generation. These Gen Y-ers are in search of meaning at work and in their personal lives. With the average age of Mazars staff worldwide being 28, these generational differences are important for the group to understand.
Certain lessons from the survey have already helped Mazars company managers to take greater responsibility for their Gen Y staff and make better decisions in their favour. The Mazars survey results have thrown up many differences that do not compare to conventional findings in other studies on the Gen Y generation. For instance, these staffers seek more openness, more flexibility, increased creativity and more respect for gender equality.
Other surprises in the survey show that the average age of senior staff at Mazars worldwide is 32. This is welcome news for the organisation since this talent pool of professionals has an average year of birth of 1983, which is young when compared to the 750 partners in the group whose median age is 50.