There is a lot of discussion these days about our aging workforce and ideas around how to 'fix' the problem. But one discussion caught my attention the other day and it was the number of young consultants that jumped ship after a few months / one year of working. Reasons given were work/life balance, not getting paid enough, and not having enough responsibility.
This age group is called the "Millennials" and defined as born after 1982. They will soon be taking over the workforce and have radically different views on 'work' than their seasoned counterparts!
On one side of the fence are the seasoned workers. Their biggest complaint is that they feel the millennial generation has a sense of entitlement or instant success. After all, they worked themselves up from the bottom, spent a good number of years making a paltry salary to establish themselves! Who do these kids think they are?
“Millennials are very optimistic in the future, and are ambitious people,” Sohal said. “Baby boomers know it takes years to climb the corporate ladder and pay scale, but younger employees don’t see it that way; they think it won’t take them years to climb.” (Source)
In support of the younger crowd - something to think about is the amount of change in the world. This younger generation never had pagers and most don't even know what a land line is... They have been brought up in a world of instant news and instant gratification. Whereas the boomers eagerly awaited the evening news for the days updates, Millennials just login to their smart phones and download it right away. Large scale events such as uprisings are on YouTube even before the government can shut down communications. So, where is the disconnect?
I think it has to do with a large scale system error, mostly with established, older, organizations. Businesses are set up in a hierarchical manor - the expectation is that someone should start at the bottom and work their way up the ladder; it is as much about putting in your time as it is about performance. Age-ism is rampant in this climate! As is the discrimination based on how many years one went to school and what experience you have in the world. Do all of these factors really matter at the end of the day?
Unfortunately the answer is yes and no. Experience is a powerful thing. How do you know that you don't know something unless you have experienced it? However, being able to think outside of the box and not having the constraints of past decisions is also equally as powerful. How else are we to learn from our mistakes?
At the end of the day we need to come up with a way to keep this generation engaged and at the same time maybe rethink the older paradigms of how our organizations are set up! Are we leveraging our full potential? How can we retain our younger workforce?
This age group is called the "Millennials" and defined as born after 1982. They will soon be taking over the workforce and have radically different views on 'work' than their seasoned counterparts!
On one side of the fence are the seasoned workers. Their biggest complaint is that they feel the millennial generation has a sense of entitlement or instant success. After all, they worked themselves up from the bottom, spent a good number of years making a paltry salary to establish themselves! Who do these kids think they are?
“Millennials are very optimistic in the future, and are ambitious people,” Sohal said. “Baby boomers know it takes years to climb the corporate ladder and pay scale, but younger employees don’t see it that way; they think it won’t take them years to climb.” (Source)
In support of the younger crowd - something to think about is the amount of change in the world. This younger generation never had pagers and most don't even know what a land line is... They have been brought up in a world of instant news and instant gratification. Whereas the boomers eagerly awaited the evening news for the days updates, Millennials just login to their smart phones and download it right away. Large scale events such as uprisings are on YouTube even before the government can shut down communications. So, where is the disconnect?
I think it has to do with a large scale system error, mostly with established, older, organizations. Businesses are set up in a hierarchical manor - the expectation is that someone should start at the bottom and work their way up the ladder; it is as much about putting in your time as it is about performance. Age-ism is rampant in this climate! As is the discrimination based on how many years one went to school and what experience you have in the world. Do all of these factors really matter at the end of the day?
Unfortunately the answer is yes and no. Experience is a powerful thing. How do you know that you don't know something unless you have experienced it? However, being able to think outside of the box and not having the constraints of past decisions is also equally as powerful. How else are we to learn from our mistakes?
At the end of the day we need to come up with a way to keep this generation engaged and at the same time maybe rethink the older paradigms of how our organizations are set up! Are we leveraging our full potential? How can we retain our younger workforce?
