The Millennial Generation is almost certainly going to be a great Career Generation. But probably later in life than when prior generations began to make their marks on the American workplace.
An epochal moment has arrived in American life. Millennials are redefining - surely permanently - what it is like to live life in one's twenties.
First, the good news.
First-Wave (older) Millennials (in 2008, their age is 17 to 26) are much like their parents, who are mostly Baby Boomers: idealistic, empowered, and engaged. They are the September Eleventh and Hurricane Katrina Generation, so they're passionate about helping the less fortunate because it's the right thing to do. They think they're going to make a big difference in life on earth, so they're engaged in the democratic process. One of my newspaper clients, the Columbus (OH) Dispatch, after being trained in Generational Dynamics, reviewed the Central Ohio voting records from the 2004 general elections. Millennials had significantly outvoted older GenX in terms of the percentage of registered voters from each generation.
My corporate clients, whose management teams I train and consult in Generational Workforce Diversity And Human Resource Strategy, describe the positive qualities of their Millennial employees in this way:
"Tremendous spirit; eager to learn; tech savvy; media savvy, good sense of team-think; want their employer to be ethical and eco-friendly; have enjoyed very close relationships with their parents and thus have nice personal foundations"; dynamic, like the Boomers; care enough to speak up when they see something at work they think is unfair or wrong"; and other such praise.
But here's the big pivot that employers are now wrestling with as they hire these First-Wave Millennials:
Because this generation will live well beyond age 100, thanks to this Golden Era Of Anti-Aging research that is now in full bloom, Millennials know they're going to be working for 80 to 100 years! So...
What's the rush?!
Unlike prior generations that left school and instantly got serious about a career commitment, Millennials are using their first decade of adulthood to: (1) have some fun; (2) delay the serious commitment of marriage and parenthood (in 1970, American women married for the first time at age 20; today, it's 27 and climbing); and importantly, (3) sample jobs, sample professions, sample bosses, and sample cities in which to live, thus postponing serious commitment to an employer.
This new approach to 20-something life is called "Extended Adolescence". Or "Odyssey". Or "Emerging Adulthood". In other words, extended childhood.
And it's that third point, above - the sampling - that is frequently creating problems for American companies, many of which need a greater commitment from their late-teen or early-twenties New Hires than those extended adolescents are nowadays choosing to give.
The evidence is unmistakable. Millennials are showing less loyalty to employers than any previous generation of twenty-somethings, including job-hopping GenX (current age in 2008 is 27 to 43).
I received a recent phone call from one of the world's preeminent corporate-finance consulting firms. A senior executive on the other end of the line, from the company's Los Angeles office, said, "Help! Our company tends to hire high achievers when they reach about age 25, and we instantly invest more than ten-thousand dollars in their training. With this new generation, we're watching as they undergo our training, instantly type that training onto their resume', and bolt to the next job!"
My corporate clients around the country repeatedly say that Millennials don't want to work the pay-your-dues hours that entry level usually requires, that their generation often views overtime as an unacceptable intrusion upon their work-play balance, which is very important to them. And, this make-the-world-a-better-place generation is so eager to do meaningful and relevant work - and that's a good thing - that they sometimes consider entry-level assignments to be beneath them.
And because significant numbers of Millennials are living with their parents (a couple of years ago, a UCLA study found that 60% of America's college grads of 2005 were going right back home to live with Mom and Dad), if their new job is the least bit undesirable they can quit on a whim, knowing they still have food and shelter. Prior generations, living on their own immediately after their school days, didn't enjoy the same parental safety net.
Because this is the generation that has been told since birth by its over-protective and nurturing Helicopter Parents, "You are the center of the universe", Millennials also are beginning new jobs with wildly unrealistic expectations about pay and advancement and with a naive sense of entitlement. As one senior executive of a corporation that employs tens of thousands of Millennials told me, "Their attitude is, 'I want a lot from life and I don't want to work too hard to get it'."
So, for those employers that want to make a serious commitment to New Hires and request - but are not getting - a serious commitment in return, we might be looking at a major evolution in the American workplace.
In the future, we might find that, as 20-somethings use that first decade of adulthood to have fun and avoid serious commitments, job recruiters in certain industries might bypass them and permit them to flip burgers for a decade but then hire them in their late 20s or early 30s when they're finally ready to leave their Extended Adolescence.
Right now, most such employers are working diligently to avoid that extreme shift in their recruiting. My clients and I are exploring middle-ground, rather than "showdown" strategies, which include:
• Training management in the unique values and attitudes that Millennials are bringing into the workplace to minimize misunderstandings based on inaccurate
• Identifying - and training management in - bold new initiatives and strategies and workplace accommodations that WILL engender New Hire loyalty;
• And, training Millennials in realistic expectations and helping them to appreciate the affect of their job-hopping on employers.
But the new reality seems to be this:
20-something is no longer going to be adulthood. Because of our rapidly-increasing lifespan, this decade of life is going to be extended adolescence because it can be. First-Wave Millennials just happen to be the generation that is catching this new wave, just as Boomer women caught the Women's Movement wave, and just as Xers caught the computer wave.
And you know what? If employers and 20-somethings both understand this seismic shift, it should work much better than the traditional model. If young people are now going to commit to an employer at age 30, employers can make the necessary adjustments to their hiring. And having sampled for a few years, those 30-somethings will then probably make smarter decisions when accepting jobs.
But at whatever age it occurs, generational study indicates that the Millennials are going to be an energized, passionate, and magnificent Career Generation. Hail the Millennials....