What Do Millennials Really Want at Work? the Same Things the Rest of Us Do

Course Title: Human Resource Management

 “What do Millennials Really Want at Work? The Same Things the Rest of Us Do”

By Bruce N. Pfau

Summary

The article talks about that Millennials are entitled, easily distracted, impatient, self-absorbed, lazy, and unlikely to stay in job for long. In short, millennials are considered as job hoppers. On the positive side, they’re also looking for purpose, feedback, and personal life balance in their work. Millennials are considered as considered as the consumers of workplace because they shop around for the jobs that best align with their needs and life goals. According to the article, the published and unpublished studies examining generational differences concluded that meaningful differences among generations probably do not exist in the workplace. The only difference only is the stage of life. Based on the survey that was conducted, it was proved that millennials and older workers have many of the same career goals like a positive impact in the organization, solve social or environmental challenges, work with a diverse group of people, work for the organization among the best in their chosen industry, to have a good financial stability and lastly is have their own business.

Millennials reported being more satisfied with the training and skills development they receive. That’s why in today’s generation, voluntary turnover is higher among millennial population because Millennials fundamentally think about their role as a stepping stone and a growth opportunity. The article also talks about the poor research about the millennials comparing to other groups that makes the researches end with invalid conclusions based on otherwise valid facts. They also compare the differences among groups and changes in the workplace from digital world that doesn’t always distinguish high quality from low quality research. It is better to say that whether one looks across generation, race or gender employees have generally wanted the same things from work and that is they want to be proud of the organization they work for. All employees want to be able to do a good job and they want to work in an inclusive environment where they are respected, valued and treated fairly.

Purpose of the Article

The purpose of the article is to give insights that there are no significant differences from millennials to any other groups when it comes to finding a job that gives growth opportunities and advancement. If there are such differences, it is only the matter of stage of life. Millennials are considered as Job-hoppers because they got easily bored once they find their work as misaligned to the career they want to be. They keep on finding good opportunity because Millennials place a greater emphasis on opportunities to learn and grow and opportunities for advancement. Unlike the other groups ranging from 35 years old and above, they stay longer or less likely to leave the firm. All ages or generations have same reasons in deciding whether to join or stay in an organization.

Article Satisfaction

The content of this article gave us the answers we are expecting, they provided data and studies that coherently explained the information that they wanted us to know.  From the actual scenario into explaining why such thing happen and what makes the Millennial different from everyone else. From a millennial reader’s perspective, it makes me realize how strong the personality of our generation is in taking the risk of moving to another company even though we mastered the tasks and knows well the people from our previous organization. The guts to make a move and find the place that will truly make us feel we are valued and will give us excitement as we travel our way to the office every day. Once we find that, we’ll surely be there for a long period of time.

Frameworks Used

The researcher used a comparative analysis between the millennials and the older generations namely, Generation X and Baby Boomers. This method showed that about the percentage of Millennials (25%) want to make a positive impact on their organization as Gen X (21%) and Baby Boomers (23%). Differences are uniformly minimal across nine other variables as well. The figures used by the researcher are as below:

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The percentage results above shows that Millennials are somewhat the same when it comes to different career goals with the older generations. However, Millennials also showed some decline in some factors such as working in the best organization in the industry, being passionate at work, and managing work-life balance.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we thought that it would be fair to say that millennials indeed are the same as other generations. Though more attention grabbing, the goal of these millennials were the same as the goals of any other generations. Because like all generations, millennials have the same reasons on deciding on whether to stay or join in a company. It is not easy to compare millennials on other generations’ base on facts. Because these facts can make researches end with invalid conclusions based on these said facts.