Stop Talking about Millennials like We are Not in the Room

It was more than a decade ago that I remember starting to talk about millennials in the workplace. It started popping up in your HR lingo at conferences and professional articles, and eventually made its way into our boardrooms and senior leadership meetings. It initially sounded like we were talking about some obscure tribe on the other side of the world, a remote unknown culture, or even a foreign threat. It was almost always with a negative connotation if not downright disapproval. ‘You know these millennials…’ senior management would say while wagging their fingers and vaguely complaining about millennial ‘entitlement’ and ‘lack of professionalism’. I cringed then and was careful not to remind people that – awkward – I’m a millennial.

The thing is, ten years ago we millennials were people under 27 years old, your interns, your entry-level, your newest managers. Ten years ago we were cool to help you convert that pdf to a word doc, we had patience because were still the minority, we would do the double work of updating the project plan on the new software all ‘the millennials’ are using and also sending out the same information in an e-mail excel for our directors; now, well, it’s starting to feel like our otherwise awesome older colleagues are still dismissing our perspectives as they would a petulant teenager’s, holding onto this belief our ‘ways’ are just a fad, and our needs the result of over-nurturing our childhood fantasies, and that the sooner we ‘wise-up’ to the real world and how business actually works, the better. If I go to one more conference where a speaker talks patronizingly about how to cater to my age group to pacify my idealistic struggle for a better work-life, I will tune out and scroll my instafeed like the petulant teenager you are making me out to be.

I’m 37 and I’m super-done with this narrative. I am also done with pretending I’m not in the room when we talk about millennials. Granted, I made the cutoff for the millennial group by 3 months, some say xenial, or cus-per, but I think I get it. I work with mostly people younger than myself, and a senior leadership group all older than myself; so I go between these groups a lot, translating their foreign languages to each other, mediating like a family counselor between the parents and their kids. After several years of this, I’m team millennial all the way and I’ll tell you why.

Social change – as I understand it from a meme I read – starts with cultural change: arts, music, cities, youth. As that cultural change bubbles up and starts being more widely accepted, then we see the economics follow, business finds ways to make money and create jobs based on cultural interests, lastly follows political change, where the change is ratified into law and becomes the new normal. Think of a social change in your lifetime and does it follow this pattern? Something like same sex relationships is a good example: cultural change started bubbling up in the 60s and 70s in music and art, then shifted economics with major television productions and more gender fluid fashion options, finally the political change with the overturning of DOMA and the freedom for same-sex couples to marry in the USA. Now, that struggle is still real, because they will continue to fight the haters who want things to ‘stay’ the way they ‘were’…..but you can see how the change is inevitable, right? If you don’t, ask someone in their twenties.

Rather than fighting a losing battle of resisting the changes that our younger employees are proposing, what if - as HR leaders - we saw ourselves as facilitators of it? What if we passed the mic, provided the platform, allocated resources based on what our people are asking for, not our stakeholders. If you are in a business that is traditionally top down, where the senior leaders dictate the strategy and everyone files in line to execute, this is a major paradigm shift.

As the HR people, if all we are doing is responding to the last phase of social change, i.e. political change, we are reactive, compliance-focused hasbeens. Like if you only offered benefits to same-sex couples after the reversal of DOMA, or still haven’t, how are you recruiting anyone? (like, seriously, how? That was three years ago!) But if we plug into the change when it’s born at the culture level we could be way ahead of the game (also - at this point- that isn’t even listening to millennials, but whatever new threat to the patriarchy is in grade school now: my kids). A more comfortable place for us to start - friends on the cusp and those sympathetic to our cause who are over 40, and the impatient up-and-comers under 30 who are thinking of leaving for a more progressive business – is hold hands and focus on the middle place: economic change.

That means, no more zero-sum decision-making. How do we value our employees and generate profit margins for the stakeholders? How do we have a flex-time schedule and ensure work is getting done? How do we provide individualized benefits and not break the bank? How do we include millennials in our decision-making and make sure they have the historical and seasoned knowledge of senior leadership to make good choices? (I am totally picking up that this is sounding increasingly like parenting advice. Noted. And continuing.) What’s good for our people and good for the business? Do both, not one, if you feel like you must choose you aren’t being creative enough and need more millennials at the table. #sorrynotsorry

Companies who ‘get-it’, who have millennials in senior leadership, are not only speaking the language but leading by example. If you are having a conversation in your senior leadership group about ‘them’, just stop. Stop and bring ‘them’ into the room. Nothing about us without us. (I got this from our D&I group at work, words to live by). Millennials aren’t leaving jobs because they aren’t loyal, or are indecisive, or don’t want to do hard work, they are leaving because you are not giving them a good deal. We aren’t lazy, we are smart. We don’t want the 9-5 soul-sucking gig our parents had, we want something better: time to enjoy our youth, things to brag about on social, connection to a greater good, ability to be an individual, benefits and perks that suit those individual needs, and yes – your time, attention, appreciation, and serious consideration – we aren’t kids anymore.

And if we are in the room, ask yourself, have you created a culture in your senior leadership group that doesn’t value the millennial perspective to the point that you have silenced the millennials at the table? Are they listening quietly then leaving the meeting with an eye-roll to go complain to their fellow employees about how un-woke you are. (The answer is: yes, that is exactly what we are doing.) If you consider yourself older than millennials and are referring to them as a foreign entity, I highly recommend getting to know some of us personally and find a way to value our values, because 10 years from now, we will be in the majority of the senior leadership team, and you don’t want to be the last one in the room holding on to archaic work principles and processes.

The last thing you need to learn to appreciate about millennials: they not only care for themselves, their mental and emotional well-being, but how that well-being is perceived by others, and how ‘others’ have access to the same well-being options. What a great group of people we are so lucky to have in our companies and in our country right now. Congratulations, you have raised a generation of humans who believe in their own self-worth and value the responsibility their privilege brings; and now they work for you. Listen to us. Learn from us. Join us.