Everyone is still trying to figure out millennials, including millennials themselves. As we noted a few weeks ago, millennial writers like Raffi Wineburg are fed up with older generations constantly scrutinizing their very existence. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that, with all the criticism by academicians, business leaders and the media, 66 percent of millennials in Bentley University’s PreparedU survey reported feeling completely misunderstood.
So, what do millennials want, and what does make them happy? According to some recent stories and studies, it might boil down to these two simple things:
Experiences
Chief Learning Officer’s “Ask a Gen Y” column this week features Sean Brennan, senior strategist and envisioner at innovation design consultancy Continuum. While finding fulfillment at work isn’t a new concept, he notes, it’s one that millennials have elevated and are using to force companies to rethink how they can make workers happier because, “All we have are our experiences. Well, those and a ton of student debt.”
Experiences factor so much into the job decisions of many millennials that BloombergBusinessWeek reported this week “nearly two-thirds of young people surveyed said they’d prefer a salary of $40K at a fulfilling job to a $100K paycheck at a soul-crushing one.”
Social Responsibility
Psychology Today recently pointed out that with nearly 50 percent of millennials already in leadership positions, “most companies are discovering that supporting and retaining this talent requires a new way of doing business.” And that new way of doing business is one with more of a focus on social responsibility, something employees of all ages can get behind.
In this recent Wall Street Journal piece, Stanford University professor of philanthropy (and wife of a Silicon Valley venture capitalist) Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen said, “Millennials have more social consciousness than any other generation,” citing the fact that 72 percent of college students in a 2012 study said that working for a firm that creates some sort of social impact is important to their happiness. Arrillaga-Andreessen added that “65 percent of those incoming workers would also take a pay cut to work for those companies.”
So, if meaningful career experiences and making a difference in the world are all that matter to millennials, what makes them so different from previous generations? Why all the hype, hyper-analyzing, and heed to “figure out” millennials, as 25-year-old Radhika Sanghani attempts to do in this week’s Telegraph?
Perhaps, in part, it’s because they’re the first generation to grow up native to the pace of innovation and technology, in the age of flexible hours and remote work and the entrepreneurial spirit, and the rapid change and informality all of that has brought to the workplace over the last decade. Or, perhaps it’s that by focusing on what makes millennials happy, we’re trying to find the “secret sauce” for corporate cultures and business models in which workers of all ages and backgrounds can coexist — maybe even thrive.
April Lane is a freelance writer.