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The Millennial Mind-Set
People roughly under the age of 30, also called "Generation Y," would rather enjoy the rides of their careers than shoot for big titles and big perks down the road. Their definition of success may surprise you.
You look at the blog at EmployeeEvolution.com and you immediately get the impression that the authors are dissatisfied. For one thing, the title of the blog itself sounds like a call for change: Employee Evolution. Depending on how much time has passed since the most recent Wednesday installment of "Hump-Day Humor," a YouTube video might be visible above the fold, perhaps displaying workplace incompetence in the vein of NBC's The Office. The corner of the masthead features a man in a black suit wearing a frightening, open-mouthed growl and punching out from the page. And if you're a techie and think to read the small type at the very bottom of the page, you'll see that the blog's "theme" -- the prefab design template on which the blog's fonts, colors and layout are based -- is called "Contempt." "Contempt" might be overstating the mood of the blog and its Generation Y authors just a bit. But they'd agree to "frustration." Employee Evolution, taglined "The Voice of Millennials at Work," is typical of the widespread frustration felt by today's twentysomethings as they enter the workplace. Frustration at a nine-to-five day that shoehorns all of their work time into what may or may not be their most productive hours. Frustration at an environment that requires face time, yet is partitioned to stifle cooperation and collaboration. Frustration with a system that seems to force an either-or set of choices: Either go to the gym or work. Either get the job done or leave early. For millennials, the modern world is one of ands. They feel entirely capable of getting the job done and leaving early, of going to the gym and using a cell phone or BlackBerry to work during the drive. These young people want to be able to work from home, from the park or at midnight instead of noon. They want a job that gives them opportunities for self-development, even if that development doesn't directly impact their job. They want it all. And luckily enough for them, today's companies are hungry enough for millennial talent that corporate America might just give it to them. "It's a great time to be a 20-year-old," says Penelope Trunk, 40, a Boston Globe and Yahoo! Finance columnist and author of Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success. "They totally rule the workplace right now because they're in such high demand. And also, they absolutely won't take a job they don't want. So if you don't offer jobs that millennials like, you don't fill your entry-level positions." Expert opinions on millennial talent abound. You've heard and read what the analysts and pundits have to say about these strong, savvy individuals who communicate via text and instant messages in short, often misspelled words; who have a greater interest in personal development than in paychecks; and who have more concern for work/life balance than adherence to schedules and deadlines. Now, let's take a look at what a few millennials themselves have to say.
Boomers' Misperceptions Trunk's own workplace blog (penelopetrunk.com) features a guest series called "Twentysomething," written by Ryan Healy, one of Employee Evolution's founders. Trunk says that when millennials do settle for jobs that are "just a paycheck," they're only biding their time before hopping to a more rewarding engagement. This generation does not have problems finding willing employers. That gives millennials quite a bit of power for workplace change. "Through the baby boomers' eyes, it looks like they want all new rules and everything different," says Trunk. "But they don't actually care what the rules are. They grew up being taught that personal growth and personal development are really important and they just want to go to work and have that." Steven Rothberg, president of Minneapolis-based CollegeRecruiter.com, says the extreme brand of work/life balance that millennials demand comes as backlash from the work habits of their baby-boomer parents. Rothberg, who is himself 41, adds that boomers might have worked 60 hours a week in order to climb the corporate ladder. Millennials, on average, would rather move slower and ignore the ladder. "You can tell [boomers], 'You can take Friday off,' and they're not going to because if they take Friday off, they're not going to get the corner office. The millennial is like, 'Corner office? I'd rather go biking,' " says Rothberg. Neither Healy, 22, nor his Employee Evolution co-founder, Ryan Paugh, 23, speaks longingly about the quest for that corner office. Both are currently working nine-to-five office jobs in partitioned environments they jokingly refer to as "cubicle hell," but neither expects to work at his current company for more than a handful of years. This isn't disloyalty, but it isn't loyalty, either, they say. Paugh, Healy and the rest of their generation are more free agents, with both employer and employee always keeping an eye out for the next good prospect. "Neither of us hates our job," says Paugh. "There's always good and bad in every situation. What we're trying to do is point out some of the negatives and maybe help change them." Will they be able to affect change? Perhaps, if employers start feeling the talent crunch many are predicting and want badly enough to attract the best prospects. Workplace conventions are not easy to alter, but Healy and Paugh are at the top end of the millennial bell curve, making them desirable above even many fellow millennials. Both are highly ambitious and highly motivated. Paugh and Healy both performed very well in college at Penn State University (Healy was on the Dean's List) and took management roles in their fraternity, dealing with budgeting, event scheduling and recruiting. They managed several major philanthropic projects in college and now, with their blog, have been mentioned in the Wall Street Journal (Paugh) and participated in a podcast for it (Healy). Healy has appeared on Yahoo! Finance. Here's what they don't want: just a job. They want an opportunity to learn and grow, and they want a healthy work/life balance -- although Healy dislikes the term "work/life" because of the dichotomy it implies. "This whole notion of needing to separate work and life implies that your career, which takes up about 75 percent of your day, is something you simply try to get through so you can go home and do what you really enjoy for the other 25 percent. What a terrible way to live," he writes. As an alternative, Paugh proposes a "blended life," where work and life intermingle throughout the day. "The thing that's so tough about 'nine to five' is that you're putting in your eight-hour day all lumped into one period," Paugh says. "There are times in the day when I can't even focus. I'll say to myself, 'Wow, I wish I could be doing this at 9 o'clock at night, when I'm at my peak.' I could be doing something right when I wake up -- get that cup of coffee, get a project done, then take a break and go outside for a little bit. Work/life balance doesn't need to be work, then life, then sleep and wake up, then work and life again." If you've been paying close enough attention to discussions about this new group of workers, you'll notice a seeming contradiction here. Millennials want to do work their way, on their own schedule. Yet it's also been extensively reported that they want more hands-on management and mentoring. No real surprise coming from the generation that wants to have its cake and eat it too. "I like being recognized and appreciated for my work, and I like getting background about a project from my manager before I dive in," says Healy. "However, I enjoy getting things done creatively, in my own way." Healy stresses that he's referring to management, not micromanagement. Tell him what to do, be available for guidance and questions, and check in with him regularly to offer tips. E-mail, cell phones and instant messaging all make it possible to have this ongoing mentoring and communication without co-existing in adjoining cubicles. Gen Y does want close management. They just don't need that management to be ... well ... physically close. "I don't want to be babied," says Healy. "I want to be trusted." Healy and Paugh are only dissatisfied and frustrated with parts of their jobs -- micromanagement, nine-to-five thinking, the need to do work in one specific place -- and not the jobs themselves or work in general. They simply want to point out some drawbacks in today's work environment and propose better, millennial-friendly ways of handling them -- such as some of the things Google has done.
Some Solutions Mountain View, Calif.-based Google needed private spaces for software engineers to work, but wanted to foster the kind of open communication often lacking in cubicle environments. What emerged was a large central atrium with desks and open workspaces around it. Kitchenettes and pool tables accent the space for interaction and chatter. Ad-hoc conference rooms, with collapsible walls that can be quickly erected and disassembled, encourage groups to gather in private for brainstorming and collaboration. "The exchange of ideas is essential to driving innovation at Google. Our workspaces reflect this," says a Google spokesperson. "Not all great ideas come when you are sitting at your desk. A conversation over a game of pool or foosball could spark a new idea." "Googlers" work in teams, and schedule their work within those teams. Some work early and some work late, but each works at a time that is most productive for that individual. Though Google gets their high praise for flexible scheduling, Minneapolis-based Best Buy flat-out embodies Healy's and Paugh's concept of "blended life." With a now five-year-old program called "results-only work environment" (ROWE), Best Buy allows many of its employees to truly work whenever they want. About 60 percent of headquarters employees are on ROWE, and productivity has increased an average of 35 percent. Now, Best Buy is about to start testing a somewhat modified version of ROWE in select retail stores. These sorts of approaches -- playing pool at work, working when you want to -- may run counter to conventional business wisdom, says Trunk, but it's these very types of innovations that will attract the best millennials if the already prominent talent shortage begins to intensify. If jobs are everywhere and base pay and work are similar in most of them, it may be a company's unconventional quirks that tip the scales toward one employer over another. If the talent shortage is indeed a real thing (and only time will tell), top recruits will be able to pick and choose among many suitable jobs, and may well make their choices based on environment as much as on pay. Even the companies who snag the top millennials will always have to defend against their wandering eyes. "I expect to be at a job one to three years," says Healy, "because that's what the statistics say." Paugh agrees: "If I really liked the company, and I was absolutely in love with what I was doing, maybe I would do that for the rest of my life, but I don't know. I don't know if that's possible." Devin Reams, a workplace blogger (devinreams.com) and May 2007 graduate of the University of Colorado, has an attitude that appears pretty typical of high-ability, driven millennials. While already ambitious and accomplished at his current age of 20 (his past projects include writing several articles, building several blogs, designing several Web sites and writing an Internet comic strip), Reams seems unconcerned and almost laid back in his approach to his career. His first out-of-college job is with a Big Four accounting firm, but he seems neither excited nor eager to jump up and start grasping for rungs of the corporate ladder. "I'm taking the first job, just to go and see what it's like," he says. "And," he adds, " if it's not something I'm that thrilled about, no big deal. I haven't had much trouble finding jobs up to this point. It's just making sure there is enough money to get by and to do those fun things I want to do." For Reams, a job should offer a paycheck and an opportunity for personal development. Reams says he wants to learn, noting that once he stops learning, he starts looking around for another job. He says he anticipates finding a new full-time job every few years, based on what he's able to learn and how much variety he's offered in terms of the projects he's given.
Meaning of Success So what do millennials want? In an age when employer-employee loyalty is seriously compromised, and when workers consider work no more important than family, recreation, fitness and friends, what does "success" mean? "[Millennials] don't think in terms of aiming for something," says Trunk. "Careers are more dynamic today, so it's a process. "They want that process to be rewarding," she adds. Paugh and Healy give their definition of success using a term that Trunk (herself a Gen Xer) shies away from using to describe a key twentysomething goal: Happiness. "If I'm not happy with what I'm doing with my life -- what defines me as a person -- then what the hell am I here for?" says Paugh. Paugh and Healy aren't naïve. They know older generations -- including their baby boomer parents -- roll their eyes at what must look to them like a wide-eyed, head-in-the-clouds approach to life and career. Both say they expected -- but have not received -- a lot of feedback from older generations saying essentially, "Suck it up, kid. Nobody likes their job." But they also know that the need to be happy along the way -- whether it means enjoying your job, having flexibility, learning, or finding work fulfilling -- is a key millennial trait that employers who want to attract the best would do well to keep in mind. "Just because [older generations of working Americans] disliked their jobs but stuck with it and did it anyway, why does that mean that we have to?" asks Healy. "If you look at the numbers, as the baby boomers leave, people are going to have to fill those jobs," he says. "There are going to be jobs available for us to fill -- jobs that we can find that we really enjoy."
November 1, 2007 Copyright 2007© LRP Publications |
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