Millennials: The Modern Workplace’s Most Wicked Problem
It’s official. Millennials now make up a majority of the both the developed and developing world workforce. The term ‘millennial’, developed by Neil Howe and William Strauss in 1991, can be used to describe any person born between 1980 and 2000. Never before in human history has there been a generation that shares less with its predecessors in terms of values, incentives and the way they engage with the world (namely, the significant role technology plays in their lives).
The wicked problem in the workplace is therefore probably obvious to you: owners, executives and managers are now in charge of a majority workforce with whom they share very little and of whom they understand even less. This analysis assumes that millennials are even working in big companies at all. Official statistics on the other hand suggest that the millennial generation is proving itself to be the most entrepreneurially-inclined generation in history (a topic we’ll get to in another post a bit later on).
So, why the disconnect?
How do we solve the layers upon layers of wicked problems emerging as a result of this clash of generations? Stage one is, of course, identifying those wicked problems. We’ve broken them into X meta categories:
- Understanding Millennials
- Attracting Millennials
- Motivating Millennials
- Engaging Millennials
- Retaining Millennials
- Maximising their potential of Millennials
There is also the tricky business of empathising with the unique challenges facing Millennials when empathy – particularly in the workplace – hasn’t really been part of the workplace before. “Get on with it” has been the historic response.
We’ve taken the time to understand these important issues because they affect us too. AKCG is a multi-generational, multi-cultural, global workforce that loves wicked problems like decoding the values, passions and struggles of an entire generation. We want our learning to ease the pain of wicked problem solving for other organisations and businesses so you can focus on your core skill set.
We’ll take each of these categories in turn over the next several weeks, linking to each added section above as we flesh them out. Alternatively, if you’d like us to let you know when we’ve added to this series please subscribe to our e-newsletter below.
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