On "Millennials"

A post by a recruiter caught my eye today. He was commenting on how many young people leaving university today have never received a pay-check, for anything. The post was, as far as I could tell, earnest and astonished. I have no issue with the post.

What did dismay me were the comments. They were predictable. "I had so and so many jobs", "I lived in a matchbox, which was on fire, and I never complained while simultaneously waiting tables and scrubbing floors and caring for my 15 siblings", "I wore my fingers to the bone picking strawberries", "young people these days don't know the value of money".

I may have taken some poetic license here, but you get the drift, and in any case, exaggeration sometimes enhances understanding!

By definition, the young people we are talking about here fall into the category we, often derogatorily, brand "millennials". And everywhere I go these days, from conference to symposium, to focus group, to strategy meetings, this term keeps cropping up, and rarely for anything good. They are not engaged, they jump ship for peanuts, they have no loyalty, they are not to be trusted because they are leaving soon anyway. Their parents raised them poorly, they are brittle, entitled snowflakes, we don't know what to do with them.

Hello! These are not only your employees, they are also your consumers. They are your future. Without them, in 10 years, you are up the proverbial creek. First in your business life, and, later, when you are going to need someone to help you take a shower!

First of all, some jobs were plentiful when we were young. You know, the paper routes, the gas station cashier jobs, the jobs at fast food places, the waiting tables, the casual labour jobs, the janitorial jobs etc. ? The jobs that paid for your inter-rail, your first guitar, your party habits, your first stereo, your first car ?

Yeah, today, those jobs often feed families. On every continent (or nearly; there aren’t many Antarctic paper routes). They are held by immigrants, old-age pensioners, or other adults, who are either down on their luck, or who just don’t qualify for anything else in today’s economy, and for whom that paper route is as good as it’s ever going to get.

Some of us were lucky enough to get an office job, back in the day. Copying, filing, running errands to the post office, making coffee. And we got paid. Better than the suckers who were scrubbing floors or dishing out burgers. Today, that would nearly always be an “unpaid internship”, and kids fight over those “jobs” like sharks over a whale carcass.

So, for those of us over 45 (and I’m way over!), and especially for those of us who have won the lottery and gained leadership positions, before we start re-enacting Monty Python’s “Yorkshiremen”, perhaps we should take a reality check and order an extra tall ladder from Amazon to help us get off our high horses.

It has been my great privilege to lead millennials (and to be the father of three of them), so I speak from experience when I tell you that if you:

1)   Pay them a living wage (which many companies don’t, because they don’t have to)

2)   Acknowledge that they are frequently saddled with student debt out of all proportion to what we were

3)   Develop them and keep them engaged

4)   Make them part of a company story that they can identify with

-      Then you will be richly rewarded. Millennials are, quite literally, your future, and your company’s future. See that you remember that, and nurture them rather than distrust and short-change them. Lift them up rather than diss them. Acknowlege that their opportunities are different from those that were presented to you. Take them for what they are, and, if you are leader, here's a radical thought: lead!