<p><a href=“Outside Opinion: Millennials frustrate HR execs”>Business News - Chicago Tribune;
<p>Subscription/signin required. </p>
<p>Actually, I was able to skip the signin, just opted out. Instead of using the posted link (which didn’t lead me to the article), I just searched the web for Chicago Tribune millineals job and the article popped up that way. It’s an interesting article and matches what H has found in his workplace and I have been seeing elsewhere. It also matches what my kids have described and some of the amazing conditions their employers have agreed to, in order to keep them happy (like being able to take one month or 2 weeks off in the middle of a summer internship). </p>
<p>It will be interesting, as these younger workers are looking for a worklife balance that many of us never had when we worked fulltime. I recall 60-80 hour work weeks at my first career–hard to have a life that way and burnt out a lot of folks.</p>
<p>I was unable to open the article. However, I do know that at my company, they are embracing flexible schedules, including work at home and granting an additional month off at certain milestones. Everyone is benefiting from this. It has a positive result in that people hardly call in sick anymore because they can work with more flexibility. I wish we had this back in the day when my kids were young. On the flip side, many are logging in hours after the kids go to bed to answer emails,etc. After they have taken away job security, benefits, pensions, etc… they need something to keep people happy. I don’t think we are working less, just with more flexibility. </p>
<p>There is also talk about the future workplace, which involves more contract/project work instead of working for one company, you may work when you want for whomever you want. Many people will have multiple careers in a lifetime. I already see some of this happening.</p>
<p>Finally, companies have high expectations from millenials. Much higher than what was expected from us. I recall there were training programs and such for our generation. The interview process alone is intimidating along with the work they are thrown into. A lot of leadership qualities are necessary. Think how long it took us to get confident enough. We were joking the other day, that if we had to go through all that today, we probably would not make the cut. </p>
<p>You can google millenials and the workplace and consistently find what the working world is saying about millenials. </p>
<p>What I find most interesting is that companies appear ready to bend over backwards to give them what they want rather than expecting them to fit in with the company culture like everyone else. They are afraid of rapid turnover and losing potential talent so they treat them with kid gloves. Companies have cut their workforce during the recession and have only slowly begun to rebuild it. Have they decided to start fresh? Have they decided dumping the higher cost employees no matter what the skill set is the way to go?</p>
<p>Bosses are instructed to give them meaningful work, make them an equal part of the team, mentor them, hand out lots of promotions, give them more vacation and flexibility with their working hours.</p>
<p>So again this generation is given exactly what they want, they are catered to. Again.</p>
<p>Is this because they are working for the generation that raised them?</p>
<p>How do the employees in their 30s and 40s react to watching this transformation? Many of these employees have been hard hit by the recession and now see these kids being catered to. Does it cause animosity? Are these employees truely the lost generation? </p>
<p>There was also a recent survey that found millenials are more apt to lie and claim others work as their own to get ahead. They believe they are less ethical than their parents. </p>
<p>I have watched my spouses large fortune 500 company act exactly this way. They are dumping older employees, promoting young people into jobs quickly even without the needed background. Marketing is controlling the entire engineering based company. They make promises they can’t deliver on. They don’t care. They are out to make a name for themselves and move off to another higher ranking job and leave the problems to be blamed on someone else. </p>
<p>Anecdotal at best… my own millenials frequently work very long hours with no compensation other than dinner and a cab home. Salaries are under $70K. They never had time off from their summer jobs/internships form the end of HS through college. Many of their friends did; I could never understand it. They were ecstatic to take a paid week of vacation this year.
But I will agree with the concept of dumping the older employee - so many of my friends 55+ are desperately looking for work after long, successful corporate careers.</p>
<p>Here is an excerpt for those who can’t access the article:</p>
<p>The survey of over 20,000 human relations professionals shows that while many millennials fit their negative workplace stereotype, there is reason for hope, too. Here’s what many of the HR managers said:</p>
<p>•Young employees have overoptimistic expectations about how quickly they’ll be able to climb the corporate ladder.</p>
<p>One HR professional set up interviews for two millennial candidates with the CEO of a multibillion-dollar company. Not only did they both cancel at the last minute, they asked if the interview could be done over Skype instead of in person, because it was too inconvenient to travel from the East to West Coast.</p>
<p>•Millennials’ sense of entitlement is frustrating. As one HR professional noted, the younger employees feel that they are owed more respect, opportunity and pay than their experience, ability or knowledge merit.</p>
<p>•Millennials lack face-to-face communication skills. Noting that this age demographic is most comfortable texting and can often seem socially inept, those surveyed say it borders on an avoidant society. Still other survey respondents say they are concerned with millennials’ need for flexible working conditions, including where and when they get work done.</p>
<p>•Millennials’ work ethic is troublesome. Besides wanting to work remotely from Starbucks, millennials are often unwilling to put in more than 40 hours a week. Their propensity for leaving the office early — according to one respondent, for a 3 p.m. yoga class — is particularly problematic.</p>
<p>HR professionals know that their companies can’t avoid hiring millennials, but question investing in training, given that they expect younger workers to leave after two to four years, or earlier. Does the return on investment ever justify the expense?</p>
<p>Some HR executives say “yes,” because millennial hires can offer rewards.</p>
<p>“Technology is the big difference with this generation. Millennials are conditioned to have the answer at hand,” one respondent says.</p>
<p>Another HR professional offers this: “Technology is almost an inherent part of their makeup. It is ingrained in their communication and in the way they work. A company has to provide a strong platform to support their natural use of technology or they become frustrated.” Other respondents appreciate the way millennials challenge traditional ways of doing things.</p>
<p>“Gosh these young kids are such entitled, lazy good for nothings! Back in MY day…” - Said every older generation ever</p>
<p>ETA: Just this week I was watching a movie from several decades ago. The older generation was lamenting about how spoiled the kids of the 50s generation were because they never wanted for food. That made them lazy, entitled bastards. This is a sentiment as old as time itself. </p>
<p><a href=“Executive Development | UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School”>http://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/executive-development/custom-programs/~/media/DF1C11C056874DDA8097271A1ED48662.ashx</a></p>
<p>Here is an entire manual for dealing with the millenials workforce. </p>
<p>I seriously cannot remember a time when companies were putting so much thought and money into catering to a new generation of workers. Closest I can come is 1980 ish. Companies were letting go of older employees without college degrees and hiring anyone who could actually turn on a computer and make it work.</p>
<p>This is an example of what worries me about this generation: My friend teaches an upper-level “community nursing” class at our local university. The students tend to show up late, and the girls dress inappropriately for going out in the community. She finally spoke to one young man, who was consistently late. He smiled condescendingly and said, “Well, I understand that promptness is important to YOUR generation…” as if that excused his behavior. This is a two-semester course, and my friend is not looking forward to the next few months. She and her co-teacher have rewritten the syllabus to include expectations for professional behavior. Maybe the students will “get it” before they begin their nursing careers.</p>
<p>“salaries are <70,000” I’m sorry, that’s low? Neither my H nor I make 60,000. A kid making more than that seems astounding to me. I mean, wow.</p>
<p><a href=“5 Tips to Help You Manage Millennial Employees”>http://humanresources.about.com/od/managementtips/a/millenials.htm</a></p>
<p>And here is yet another and more concise description.</p>
<p>I have millenial professional students every semester. Most are fine. I have had a couple that drove me bonkers with the entitlement attitude. Wanting “meaningful” work and expecting that that they knew better than people in practice for 15 years. BUT my experience was that those students were never the first gen kids or the pull themselves up by their bootstraps kids. It was always the ones that had parents who did that and catered to their very special snowflakeness. </p>
<p><a href=“Common Characteristics of the Traditionalists Generation”>http://humanresources.about.com/od/generations-at-work/a/downside-of-hiring-generation-y.htm</a></p>
<p>And yet another. This one is pretty interesting . Good things and bad about this newest work generation.</p>
<p>Garland I never said their salaries were low. I said they were <$70. I also did not say how much lower they were. I also did not mention they both work in NYC were money does not go far.</p>
<p>“One HR professional set up interviews for two millennial candidates with the CEO of a multibillion-dollar company. Not only did they both cancel at the last minute, they asked if the interview could be done over Skype instead of in person, because it was too inconvenient to travel from the East to West Coast.”</p>
<p>That seems smart to me - were they expected to travel from the East to the West Coast on their own dime just to meet with the CEO, who could easily cancel at the last minute and leave them hanging? </p>
<p>Re: <a href=“Common Characteristics of the Traditionalists Generation”>http://humanresources.about.com/od/generations-at-work/a/downside-of-hiring-generation-y.htm</a></p>
<p>The story about the barbeque seems like poor management of the food distribution, which is not specific to generation-Y people.</p>
<p>
I think the company would pay right, this is an interview with CEO.</p>
<p>These kids are smart. They know joe corporation doesn’t care about them. They don’t get married young. They don’t have kids. They are free to make their own lives. They see themselves as their “brand” and even if they are working for you, they are working for themselves. They know this. </p>
<p>This is the new world. </p>
<p>One of the complaints dbowes listed was unwillingness to work more than 40 hours per week. Good for them! My 24 yo D works more than that, but people need a life outside work. The company my S just started working for wants him there between 10 and 4, he can choose to add 2 hours at the end or beginning of that (or an hour each end). That type of flexibility benefits everyone.</p>
<p>My H works for a large company also, he has a traditional pension with extra medical benefits after retirement, younger hires have neither of these. For a long time his company has been hiring contract workers so they don’t have to pay any benefits and can let them go whenever they are in a slow period. It is a new world.</p>