Let’s call her Lauren. A smart, motivated, educated millennial at an age somewhere between 28 to 42 today.
Don Harkey of People Centric Consulting outlined the typical career path and psychology of millennials to a mostly Boomer-aged audience of publishers at the Niche Leadership Summit.
Too often, he explained, Boomers complain about millennials as “lazy, entitled job hoppers.”
He asked the audience to repeat: “Smart. Motivated. Educated.”
Lauren’s story
What’s the difference between a millennial and her boomer boss?
For starters, in her first interview, Lauren “interviews back,” asking about vacation, PTO, and what her supervisor and co-workers are like.
“What does she mean? What are they like?” He asked and answered:
“Are they cool? Are they fun to hang out with?”
Lauren asks about maternity leave, even though she is not in a serious relationship.
For her, it’s about social justice: “I mean, we should have it.”
Boomer Boss does not understand the ‘attitude,’ but gives her the job anyway.
Then she “does crazy things, like take her vacation time.”
“Boomers, you have to save it up,” he said, explaining that working hard to climb the ladder is part of the Boomer ethos.
“One of you says you haven’t taken a vacation in 26 years, and the other says well, I haven’t taken one for 27 years.”
Not so much for millennials.
The cultural priority on vacation time is not the only generational difference.
The first generation that won’t tolerate bad management
Lauren constantly asks for “unreasonable things from her supervisor, like feedback.”
“Every day she wants to know, ‘So, am I doing a good job?’”
“Her frustrated supervisor explains that he will give her feedback later, at the end of the year, in a presentation that is tied to her income.”
Lauren thinks this is unfair.
But anyway, she “kicks butt, in spite of her strange, millennial ways.”
After a really long time – for millennials about 10 months – she gets tired of her Boomer Boss not listening to her and quits.
She doesn’t have anything lined up – she thought she would find something quickly, but doesn’t, so she needs help from her parents.
At this point, he polled the Boomers in the room, which was most of us, if anyone had had kids move back in. To the sea of waving hands, he adds a personal note, “if anyone wants an expert in data analytics – he’s real smart – hit me up after the session.”
The first gig-hustle generation
So back to Lauren. She hustles. She sells refinished furniture on eBay. She takes on some clients as a personal trainer.
After an eternity – well, 3 months – Lauren finds a new job.
Her new job is like her old one.
She still doesn’t get feedback, and she gets tired of helping her boomer boss answer his email. But hey, it’s a job.
And her new employers help her to get her Master’s Degree. Millennials are, in fact, the most educated generation in history.
Then the American Dream starts to fail
When the Great Recession hits, Lauren and many of her friends get laid off.
So Lauren hustles again, but his time, she doesn’t get help from her parents. She survives and finds another job. Then the pandemic hits, inflation, housing prices. The chances of Lauren becoming better off than her parents – the proverbial American dream – are looking bleaker and bleaker.
But something else is going on quietly behind the scenes, masked by noisier cataclysmic events like the Great Recession and the Pandemic: The demographics are shifting.
The number of people aging into the workforce – i.e. reaching age 20 – “crossed the line,” becoming lower than jobs created for the first time in 2017.
Prospective employees are now in the driver’s seat. Harkey asked the room – “Is anyone looking for salespeople?”
“Some people raised six hands,” he noted.
Remember the bad management habits employers had when jobs were scarce? Yeah, you know them, such as not informing people who interviewed for a job that they were no longer candidates? Or not encouraging employees who took their time off but brought new ideas and wanted to move up in the company?
“Before, we could get by with high turnover. We heard about the high cost but didn’t take it seriously.”
Plus, “We openly complained about the younger generations. We still do… and Lauren notices. She is sick of it.
“The gig economy they are turning to is to figure out how to get away from you.”
As the labor shortage persists, employees pick up the same bad habits managers had when labor was abundant.
“By 2028, interview candidates often don’t tell us when they accept another position,” Harkey said.
“They are getting their revenge for us not telling them. Some people just never come back from lunch.”
He added that today, new candidates research a company by talking to other employees, and 71% will not apply if they don’t like what they hear. They are also looking at your website. Does it have profiles of happy team members? A sense of mission?
“There are candidates out there. They are just invisible to you. If it was a restaurant, and no one came in, you ought to think, maybe it’s not the market. Maybe it’s the food.”
1 in 3 employees are not engaged in their job
“Two-thirds of employees are disengaged or toxic,” he said studies show. “That also means that when asked about the company, the same two-thirds will say ‘don’t take that job.”
On a consulting call, one new employee told him that on the first day, a legacy employee told her “I can tell you from the smile on your face, you haven’t worked here that long.”
Employees start to openly complain about Boomer bosses. But, meanwhile, Lauren is sticking it out and moving up in the company.
She has been promoted several times and is now one level away from the executive team, who still don’t see her as an equal.
“Boomers, you suck at training the next generation,” Harkey said.
Lauren does not go to board meetings, see the financials, or participate in meetings about handling the company’s critical problems and future pitfalls.
Then, the boomer COO announces his retirement, and Lauren applies for the job.
The executives don’t think she is ready and launch an external search. They don’t find anyone.
The second quiet demographic revolution is this: Boomers are retiring at the rate of 10,000 per day. Since there are not enough Genx’ers to take their place, the average boomer will be replaced by a millennial.
Some boomers are sticking around longer than expected for multiple reasons – “finances, no successor, doing nothing is boring, among others,” but the exodus continues.
With 8.1 million job openings and 6.5 million unemployed people, “if every job were taken, we would have more than a million job openings,” he said.
Labor salaries are up 23% since 2019, he noted
“Don’t tell your employees.”
A chronic problem in the C-suite
As untrained millennials are moving into the C-suite, experience levels drop. Some companies simply close.
“We are losing expertise, ” Harkey said.
He advises to deeply involve the next generation in company issues. “Don’t act like Moses coming down from the mountain with the answer. Give them your problems. Transfer your problems to your people,” he said.
He noted the example of a hospital CEO who decided, “I want everyone to be capable of doing 50% of their boss’s jobs.”
Lauren gets the COO job, and is excited about the new role.
However, she is also apprehensive and inexperienced since no one has trained her, and she makes a lot of rookie mistakes.
Eventually, however, she gets the knack of it, but runs the company differently.
As COO, Lauren doesn’t value people who work a lot but people who work well.
She doesn’t care “if you’ve been around for 20 years.” She sees technology such as AI as an accelerator.
She wants her company to thrive, but also to have a mission and a positive impact on the community.
She creates systems that support employee engagement and loyalty.
Flash forward to 2050. Lauren decides to retire, but not fully. She takes an advisory role for the company as a new CEO takes over, so she can continue to transfer experience.
However, she has already created systems to ensure regular feedback and that every employee is actively prepared for their next position. She has included her people in understanding the company and industry’s problems. Her biggest accomplishment was putting people at the center of everything.
“If only there were something she could do about those darn GenAlpha’s,” Harkey added at the end of his presentation.
