Those born in the last two decades of the 20th century are now the largest generation in the workforce. Some of them will increasingly become business and political leaders and, hopefully, be more effective in promoting economic and social well-being to the communities they serve.
Various human resources agencies have been studying the characteristics of millennials to advise businesses on the best way of managing this generation that in many ways, is different from the previous Generation X and the baby boomers. Command-and-control management styles are for dinosaurs, and it is worrying to admit there are far too many dinosaurs still roaming in the top echelons of management including in human resources.
Global technology company Qualtrics researched millennials and found that the often-held view that this generation is lazy and based on a disconnect between millennials and older generations when it comes to priorities, structures and processes. Older generations give importance to fixed work schedules and conservative dress codes. Millennials are more focused on achieving results and give less importance to protocol and formality.
While individuals in any generation will always have a distinct personality, many millennials are hard workers who want to get results. Employers need to be more flexible when assigning work to millennials who are technologically savvy and result-oriented but expect to have the option to work remotely on occasions or even exclusively as long as they get their work done.
Contrary to some popular belief, millennials are ambitious and are not so attached to job security as previous generations. The average job tenure of millennial employees is two years. Millennials do not think twice before deciding to change jobs if they do not believe they are receiving and personal benefit of growth form their current employment.
Millennials are more focused on achieving results and give less importance to protocol and formality
Talent management is becoming an essential management function in businesses where highly skilled workers are indispensable for organisational success. It is astonishing how some major businesses even locally have human resources managers who do not have a clue how to retain valuable employees that are the target of other, more agile competitors. My advice to business leaders who risk losing valuable talent to competitors is to rethink their human resources strategy by understanding and exploiting the potential of millennial workers who are efficient problem solvers and critical thinkers.
Reforms in education take a generation to bear fruit. The concept of teamwork introduced in business schools two or three decades ago has undoubtedly helped millennials to embrace the teamwork culture. In the 1960s and 70s several businesses sought to employ former military officers to run their human resources function. Strict discipline was a desirable value.
Today millennials prefer to have a coach rather than a boss to lead them. They expect to have greater accessibility to the leadership in their offices and are looking for more mentorship rather than just direction. Managers need to create a working environment where millennial employees feel supported and valued by leadership. This is the best way to increase productivity and promote valuable relationships. This reality exposes a major weakness in current systems of evaluating employee performance. TriNet, a company that provides HR solutions, found in a recent survey that 69 per cent of millennials see their company’s review process as flawed. A significant reason for this is because of the lack of feedback throughout the year as managers claim they are too busy to spend time with their employees to identify ways of how to improve their performance.
Millennials are also inspiring a revolution in the way that a business treats its customers. While most businesses will claim that they are customer-centric, often this claim is no more than a buzzword that does not reflect how businesses treat their customers. Some of the fastest growing brands like Uber and Airbnb are built on the idea of consumer equality with regard to accessibility and shared consciousness. Millennials believe that these principles should be adopted in their workplaces.
Work-life balance is a much-discussed topic today. With more couples working full time to afford a comfortable lifestyle, pressure from millennials to work from home is increasing. This is not a result of millennial laziness but an ambition to lead a balanced life. Millennials are happy to work long hours on their projects that require additional time. However, they do not want to sit around the office until 5pm if their work is completed an hour or two earlier.
The era of millennials is indeed changing the way we work.