Millennials in the Modern Workplace: From Smashing Avocados to Sales Targets
Millennials are everywhere. Sipping piccolo lattes, lounging on ergonomically designed Swedish furniture, purchasing custom made clothing for their French bulldogs on Afterpay, and hashtagging their smashed avocado on toast; but what professional value do they actually bring to the workforce?
Generation Y have a ‘want it now, get it now’ attitude, with an overwhelming need to fulfil some god-given purpose, or even better, to have a successful and sustainable career as an instagram influencer or mummy blogger. They are outspoken, idealistic, unapologetically defiant, and expect to obtain instant gratification by receiving things before they’ve earned them.
Millennials are intelligent, but they’re equally as entitled. This is not entirely their fault; born between 1981-1996 as thoroughbred digital natives, millennials have been exposed to a highly volatile media environment in which their lives are scrutinised under a social microscope of epic proportions. Unwillingly being made hyper-aware of one’s socio-economic standing from from an early age does not have a positive impact on mental health. After years of attempting to portray their ideal online life with filtered pouting selfies, somewhere along the line the millennial is abruptly plucked out of tertiary education with a fancy sounding degree and expectations of a six-figure job, only to find themselves taking a number and waiting in line next to every other cubicle monkey in the business.
“Welcome to the workforce, young millennial. May the odds be ever in your favour.”
Disgruntled middle managers who have pounded the pavement for decades before them can often be heard cursing their very existence. “Millennials are unmotivated and think they are entitled to a promotion just because they asked for it,” yelled Betty who works in accounts. On the contrary, you have to feel for them; Bachelors degrees nowadays are about as common as changes to Australian political leadership, and entry-level jobs require 10 years industry experience, a PhD, the discovery of life on Mars, and a Nobel Peace Prize as pre-requisites.
Corporate culture has changed drastically and traditional management systems are not engendered to serve the vastly diverse workplace of today. There are some brilliant entrepreneurs and thinkers in this space, however they all seem to centre their arguments around the negative impact of millennials in the workforce, rather than the positive outcomes they bring to businesses. Surprisingly, there is very little pedagogy relating to managerial practices and innovative leadership that has been formulated by young managers and entrepreneurs, despite the fact that they will comprise 46% of the workforce by 2020. Maybe they are too busy taking selfies to realise that there is a world out there, or maybe it is because their workplaces don’t support or encourage them to do so.
The vast majority of current scholarly writing about millennials in the workplace expresses a finite need to counteractively suppress their freewill and idealistic views by portraying their unwillingness to conform to traditional management systems as a major issue. More so, publications tend to feature mature aged scholars defining what they see as a “generational problem.” Contemporary pedagogy also aims to diminish the necessity of hiring young professionals in the workplace, by rebranding their ambition as impatience; this egocentric notion undermines these young minds as tomorrow’s politicians, bankers, and C-Suite executives. This is a narrow-minded and siloed approach and one that is counterproductive, thereby ultimately resulting in a ‘square peg in the round hole’ dilemma. The millennial does not ‘fit’ into the predefined operational culture, so they are automatically outcast.
It begs the question: What if we could create a square hole for the square peg?
A examination of industries today exposes a widely diverse cross-section of professionals, so why shouldn’t corporations bolster this dynamic environment? What would happen if millennials were encouraged to explore alternative management and leadership styles, and to iterate and innovate their processes from the inside out? Has anyone even asked for their opinion lately, or are they too busy being crammed into the “one size fits all box?”
Example: 26 year old Rebecca in your office is the pinnacle of self-obsessed millennial. She gossips about the Kardashians and loves boasting about her lavish retail purchases to her posse of online gal pals. Rebecca spends several hours a day on Instagram, and has even managed to rack up a few thousands followers with some self-taught marketing savvy. She frequently shops on Instagram’s product pages and has a knack for navigating the platform, too. Come to think of it, she would have a pretty good idea about how your business could be utilising sponsored ads, hashtag algorithms and SEO to increase your site traffic and engagement, but it is a shame no one asks for her opinions during staff meetings because she’s the youngest person in the room.
What opportunities could arise from giving these young minds an environment to truly flourish? Millennials are disinterested in procedure, adherence to policy and working to achieve an outcome over a long period of time, because this is not the way their minds have been hardwired. However, do not confuse their impatience with underperformance or a fear of hard work; Millennials work smarter, not harder. They utilise the tools that they learned at an early age to expedite their processes.
Today’s media market and the modern consumer has become accustomed to a certain level of convenience. You want something, you get it instantly. Live TV streamed to your mobile device? Of course. Listen to your favourite song anywhere, anytime? Done. Want to research a recipe for dinner while at the grocery store? Easy. Why waste time reading a manual when you can watch a 2 minute YouTube video explaining how to assemble your coffee machine? Why flip through an encyclopaedia for 15 minutes looking for information on photosynthesis, when Google can provide a definition in under 1 second? The successful completion of these tasks creates the same desired outcomes; an assembled coffee machine and a definition of photosynthesis, however the journey to reach each outcome is vastly different. One is laborious and frustrating, and the other lightening-fast and convenient.
If there was a more effective way to do something, wouldn’t you do it?
Inadvertently, millennials are optimising their workflow and choosing a more efficient pathway to the same result. (Even if they can be obnoxious in doing so!) Older generations feel that by taking these shortcuts, millennials have a lack of appreciation for hard earned success and doing things “the old-fashioned way.” Understandable, considering how lazy we have become as a society, but if we were still doing the things the old-fashioned way you’d be reading this article carved into stone, and you’d have to send a messenger pigeon to your friends to tell them to read it too.
Industries have changed, and so to have the minds that shape them. Admittedly, there is no substitute for experience and knowledge particularly in upper management positions, but surely having some highly-motivated and caffeinated millennials on your team shouldn’t be something to complain about, considering they most likely comprise the market segment you’re aiming to target.
Example #2: Tony in the marketing department at your company may seem like your typical obnoxious 20-something man, but wouldn’t he have the best idea about how to market to 18-25 year old men? Who better to understand today’s modern consumer than the consumers themselves? It’s time to dump the culture of “this is the way it has always been done,” because it doesn’t service today’s marketplace.
YouTube, Spotify, Netflix, Amazon, Uber, AirBnB and thousands of other organisations weren’t created in risk-adverse environments, nor were the technological advancements that made their existences viable; it took innovative risk takers breaking the system in order to rebuild it more effectively.
Young managers should be encouraged to incorporate creative leadership styles in order to challenge traditional methodologies. In the midst of risk and uncertainty is where greatness is born, and with security and conformity comes complacency.
The definition of insanity is repeating previous actions and expecting new outcomes. There are thousands of courses offered at colleges around the world which attempt to conceptualise the notion of risk taking and innovation by slapping on a six-figure price tag and calling them Entrepreneurial Studies Courses. These institutions slur Silicon Valley buzz words like ‘agility,’ ‘lean approach’ and ‘iteration,’ in the hopes that incubator-style project work will inspire students to birth the next unicorn company from their garages, but the reality is that not everyone can be Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs. (Unfortunately)
Funnily enough, these lecture halls are also cluttered with a sea of grey-haired, 50-something professors who still use overhead projection slides for lecturing and would struggle to define what Snapchat is, yet they are crowned thought leaders in the entrepreneurial space. It’s a strange and juxtaposing environment for a young mind. Students leave the security of their college educated bubbles ready to take the corporate world by storm with fancy language and startup inspired dreams, only to have it burst in their face by the Big Bad Baby Boomers. (I call them the 4B’s) It is no wonder that they struggle to adjust to the strict confines of traditional corporations, having come from the social security of their cushy liberal arts campuses.
The classroom can take a young leader so far, but what happens outside of those walls truly defines the style of manager they will become. By providing young professionals with a collaborative and dynamic environment to flourish, they can achieve truly great outcomes for businesses.
Would you hire a basketball expert to coach a soccer team? Absolutely not. Why hire someone out of touch with contemporary culture to lead a marketing team or social media department that sets their sights on targeting a digitally charged population? This article does not suggest that millennials are the magic pill to heal corporate culture wounds, but rather that organisations should ideally be a harmonious cocktail of age-old wisdom and experience, coupled with fresh thinking and contemporary ideologies.
Traditional models service traditional businesses and it is evident that industries are in dire need of brave thinkers and free-willed young leaders capable of breaking the mould, rather than a conformity to archaic, recycled processes engendered for yesterday’s market. Ideally, businesses should reflect the dynamic and diverse landscape of today’s market, because after all, who would honestly complain about a few extra bean bags and kombucha on tap?