The Millennials: Turbo-boosting Change in the Workplace

As millennials become the dominant population in the workplace they will markedly accelerate the change that boomers have been trying to achieve for over 20 years. They will demand a commitment to change and innovation as a requirement of the organizations that they choose to work for. Most of them have grown up as the beneficiaries of diversity practices and have been a witness to smart, innovative people that do not look like them sitting beside them in classrooms, so they have an expectation that the teams of smart people that they work with, will be diverse teams and they have an implicit understanding that homogeneity is not only foreign, but does not yield the best outcomes. They have friends who are different races and ethnicities and they have seen women and people of color in positions of leadership and that is THEIR NORMAL and is table stakes for a healthy professional environment, a standard for the companies and organizations that they consider working for.

    Their expectations of the workplace that they choose to engage in will reflect what they have been used to as they have grown up: transparency, accountability, inclusivity, consistent feedback, and innovation. As they engage in the workplace, they want a clear understanding of the career path or at least what their paths will be on a particular engagement or in a particular department. They want to understand how their work, their contribution, will fit in with the company’s goals or a customer’s requirements. They want to know that their work means something and that it is valuable, this is the accountability piece. They expect that their opinions will be solicited or at least tolerated for their voice has a place in the room, unlike boomers who began their careers decades ago who knew not to say anything in meetings unless they were explicitly asked.

    Millennials also have a high appetite and expectation for feedback, as they have been engaged and have received feedback from a very early age. They are used to questioning their parents’ decisions and directives and have a reflex for doing so, which will be indicative of how they handle their work assignments. They also want the assurance that they have done a good job, or at least the feedback that they have not done a good job and how to do better the next time. This feedback is desired by every generation, but while the lack of feedback was tolerated by boomers and Xers, it is not likely to be tolerated by the best of the millennials.

    As millennials dominate the workplace in numbers their expectations of transparency, accountability and inclusivity will transform our workplaces. Because they demand broad transparency, the inequities of pay between men and women and people of color are likely to dissipate, their demands of accountability will stream line work processes and gone will be the days of busy work and non-essential analyses. Their expectations of inclusivity might just suggest that we won’t have to “work” at diversity, inclusion or innovation, we can all just deliver.