How Millenials are Reshaping Business and Workplaces

Millennials – the colloquial name given to those who were born between 1980 and 2000 – have been stereotyped in ways that are both warranted and unwarranted.

Regardless of whether or not there is any truth to the stereotypes, the facts are that the number of working millennials are increasing to the point that workplaces are now having to reshape themselves in various ways to address this group’s values.

Company Culture

As millennials enter the workforce in growing numbers, more companies are emphasising company culture in order to attract the best and brightest of the generation. In the distant past, very few companies offered traditionally unorthodox facilities like relaxation rooms, TV areas, and the like. However, it is now becoming increasingly common for businesses in a variety of industries to adopt similar facilities in their workplace.

Many companies are also adopting policies that allow its employees to have a greater work/life balance. Perhaps the most common example of such a measure includes allowing many employees to work from home and have flexible schedules, which has become easier to do in some industries due to the improvement in general technology and performance monitoring software.

Creating Greater Career/Personal Growth Opportunities

In a recent survey by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, over 60% of Millennials stated that they valued an employer that presented greater opportunities for career progression and personal growth, while only 44% valued competitive financial remuneration.

This has resulted in a growing number of younger ambitious and harder working employees, who are increasingly being offered positions with greater responsibility and influence within the company they work.

A Hunger for Knowledge

Millennials typically do not expect to have higher positions offered to them on a platter, something which is shown by their general desire for increased training and development within the workplace.

Perhaps the most typical way of providing such training is through formal means such as workshops, conferences, training sessions and the like. While formal training and development still have a place in addressing the professional values of millennials, employers do need to ensure those sessions actually provide something of substance to their employees, rather than simply being carried out for the purposes of ticking a box.

Millennials can, and are, benefitting from less traditional training and development measures, such as temporary job swapping along with increased occasional workplace duties like organising events and leading a meeting.