Recently I attended a conference in Australia where I had the opportunity to pick and choose from a list of educational and enlightening presentations.
Taking into consideration that I am a Baby Boomer with millennial children, and also that I work alongside no less than fourteen millennials! - I felt it was in my best interest to learn more about what makes this generation ‘tick’, and I jumped at the chance to attend a presentation dedicated to that very subject.
The first piece of news was that by 2030 75% of the workforce will be made up of these highly-educated, ambitious and tech-savvy people, so I started thinking does that scare me or excite me?
At times there are certain traits about millennials that I find frustrating, for example, their seemingly obsessive and intimate relationship with their mobile phone but then, after all, they have been born into a world quite different to the one I was born into, and mobile phones are now just part of the ‘norm’. Also, what they don’t know about technology isn’t actually worth knowing. The secret is to just act like you know it all too!
Despite this somewhat small frustration I am actually quite inspired by the millennial generation. They know what they want in life and launch into business earlier than my generation would ever have thought possible. I have found the millennials I work with to be incredibly optimistic and hard-working people. Ok, they may want the flexibility to support their outside work interests, and not all of them want to work a 9-5 job like their parents did in the 60s 70s and 80s, but they can be very socially responsible, down to earth and organised people.
I believe that we can all learn a lot from the millennial generation and their catch cry YOLO ‘You only live once’ surely sounds more exciting than ‘saving for a rainy day’.
By Christine Stevenson - Business Manager, Accounted4 Cambridge
