Too often we assume the future will emulate the past. We assume employees will behave much like their predecessors did, so that the 10 million worker shortfall predicted for2010 will be a problem of increasing productivity, without worrying too much about trends in workers´ attitude. But those examining the attitudes of the Millennials have discovered a striking discontinuity between Baby Boomer, GenX and Millennial views of work, and the relationship between work and life. Human resource professionals need to understand this new generation, and how its attitudes and perceptions will affect the future of work.

Millennials matter because they will find synergy between the inventions of the last 50 years and the business models for the next 50 years. The way they work and the things they pursue will drive the economy´s shape and fund the Baby Boomers´ and GenX´s social safety net. The Millennials present the industrial age economy with many challenges. Now is the time to explore new models of work that will fuel organizational productivity and new models that may require organizations to re-evaluate their assumptions, and in doing so, reshape themselves into truly 21st-century establishments.

Getting to Know the Millennials

Before I explore Millennial work attitudes, let me step back and introduce you to a generation that has perhaps more names than any previous one: screenagers, Generation Y, Generation Why, the Digital Generation, Echo-Boomers, Nexters, the Wired Generation, the Dot-com Generation and the Entitled Generation. Many in this group of more than 75 million young people born between 1980 and 1999 were raised on technology. According a Business Week report by Neuborne and Kerwin[1], they represent the most diverse generation, with one out of three in America being non-Caucasian. In their 2000 book, "Millennials Rising," Howe and Strauss report that 82 percent of Millennials see love as color-blind, and work by Teenage Research Unlimited finds that 79 percent of teens have friends of a race, religion or sexual orientation other than their own.

Many Millennials report being very open-minded and having a positive outlook, in general, about globalization. They create blogs, develop social networks, communicate via instant messages (IM) and text messages and play games with people from around the world. Commitment and follow-through form lasting bonds and reinforce trust. Unlike previous generations for which play was less structured, many in this generation were raised on team sports, dance, ice skating, "mommy-and-me" classes and a host of other structured engagements with peers and parents. The rewards and instant gratification that come from these activities, as well as the relative wealth of the families themselves, has led to the Millennials also being referred to as the most coddled generation. Because of their team and communal activities, though, and their exposure to collaborative gaming environments, many Millennials work well on teams and with other people, in the physical world and in the virtual world. When it comes to work, however, they want to work to live, not live to work.

The Millennials were born into an environment in which corporations and work life have not been given the best press. Corporations have faced scandals in leadership; jobs once seen as opportunities for lifelong employment have been outsourced, off-shored or eliminated altogether through layoffs and downsizing. Work force management costs have increased because improved health has former workers living well beyond expectations. According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, retirement income paid out by companies rose from $64 billion in 1990 to $124 billion in 2002. In addition, workers face personal burdens for healthcare costs and a near crisis caused by pension shortfalls. According to a survey by Mercer Human Resource Consulting, the annual cost for healthcare per active worker has increased from $3,644 in 1994 to $6,679 in 2004.[2] An employer taking care of an employee for life is a myth now exploded for this generation.

In their personal lives they grew up with both parents working, or even more stressful, single working parents. Social safety nets and the environment are often in jeopardy. Combined with greatly improved literacy, the pervasiveness of the Internet and the propensity toward coddling and instant gratification, Millennials can bring the following attitudes or qualities to work:

• Boredom, finding the workplace less stimulating than their personal life
• Low perception of boundaries
• Willingness to sacrifice benefits, higher pay and promotions for a better work-life balance
• Unwillingness to take on management or think of early jobs as careers
• Expectations for employers to be socially responsible
• Acceptance of authority and ability to follow rules

At a recent meeting a fellow delegate shared a story with me about two Millennials in similar jobs with a similar outcome. Both employees worked within IT at a large, traditional organization. Both performed their jobs on time and within budget. Both also did their jobs when they wanted to, within the constraints of the project, and neither saw time as a boundary. Both were asked to come into an early meeting after working late into the night on a project. Both refused. One was fired, and one quit. The issue was not performance or quality, but the expectation of the culture.

Overwhelmingly, Millennials tell me they don´t want to be like their parents, the Baby Boomers. They want to work on their own terms; they want to work where and when they want to; they want work that is meaningful, where their abilities have immediate impact on their team or organization; and they expect organizations to be dynamic and fast-moving. What they don´t want to do is work to work, and they don´t want to give up a meaningful life outside of work to achieve material goals.

Why Should We Care?

Eighty million Baby Boomers will retire over the next 25 years. The Millennials are their replacement work force, and besides their different values related to work, there are not enough of them to replace the Baby Boomers or to fund their retirements. So not only do the Millennials need to work, they need to be productive and exhibit greater earning potential.

Some believe the Millennials will change jobs as many as 19 times during their careers. The high turnover rates lead to questions about knowledge retention for firms in an increasingly knowledge-intensive economy. It is no longer possible, in many jobs, to bring in a new employee and put them to work at a productive level after a few hours or days of training and transition.

We should also care because we can learn from the Millennials. I was recently asked what made the Millennials any different than the average MBA graduate coming to an organization filled with bravado fueled by learning. The difference, I said, is that the MBA has simulated her knowledge, perhaps practiced it a bit, but she has not lived it. The Millennials don´t have the business acumen of someone with an MBA, but they have deep, nearly innate technical capabilities, community-building knowledge and high amounts of skepticism and cynicism for media and content.

Many Millennials live in the virtual world fluidly, perhaps more so than they do in the physical world. Many have their own Web sites and cellular phones, instant message and text message regularly, and build social networks with global reach, communicating with people they may never meet or see. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 87 percent of teenagers use the Internet, as compared with two-thirds of adults, a number that gets steadily lower as the age of the respondent increases, with those aged 50 to 64 reporting a 71 percent use of the Internet. Instant messaging demonstrates a huge gap in use and the perceptions of value across generations. Pew reports that 66 percent of Millennials use IM compared with approximately 40 percent of online Baby Boomers. What does this mean for the workplace? As our businesses become increasingly global and increasingly virtual, Millennials bring some of the core skills that Baby Boomers may never feel comfortable with, let alone master. Millennials bring their online experience to work and expect that experience to be valued.

Are Trends Destiny?

Microsoft Corp. created the Information Worker Board of the Future in 2004 to listen to the future leaders of the work force. We have engaged 27 exceptional young people, and they have helped form the perceptions described above. The attitudes expressed by the Millennials joining the work force may be alarming to Baby Boomer managers, but there are hints that these attitudes may reduce Millennial job turnover, increasing their earning potential and reducing organizational risk levied by high turnover.

By fulfilling the promise of technology, which is to amplify human potential, we can provide the Millennials with strong software and computing technology that allow them to maintain their flexible attitude toward work while still following through with their commitments. Perhaps those new models will find their way in our businesses, making them more attractive to this generation, which will be the influencers of the workplace for the next 50 years.

Plan for the Future

Think about the following ideas and how to incorporate them into your workplace planning and human resource policies. You may need to work through some culture issues with your Baby Boomers, but they may find that these changes make the workplace better for them, too.

• Ensure that career paths are clear and success factors are well understood not just by employees but clearly by management as well.
• Remember what you promised as much as you remember what employees committed to.
• Create strong, proactive mentoring relationships.
• Teach leadership to inspire good work, not command it.
• Provide an environment that encourages lifelong learning guided by constructive feedback and opportunities to learn.
• Encourage just-in-time learning for state-of-the-art everything: Provide access not only to Web sites or online videos but to communities of trust that can be connected to via IM, e-mail blogs or pod casts. The Millennials want to better understand everything from leadership to technology but, as in other areas: on their own terms, in their own time.
• Use facilitators to teach people how to effectively work in virtual and real-world teams.
• Provide opportunities to contribute immediately and in a meaningful way, and reward those contributions immediately.
• Provide flexible work arrangements that take into account work-life balance.
• Provide the latest technology.
• Create a warm, transparent and honest work environment.
• Let them teach as much as you let them learn.

If we incorporate some of these ideas into our workplace planning, we may find 50 years from now that the important trends were not the Millennials´ attitudes toward work, but the trends those attitudes triggered.

Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project, "Generations Online" data memo, December 2005

This chart represents IM usage data from all demographic groups. The dark blue bars represent the core working ages, with the Millennials clearly adopting the technology significantly more that previous generations. The Online Teens, although, not working, already exceed the Millennials in IM use. Online Teems will continue the transformation of the workplace being brought about by the Millennials.