Millennial Workers – New Ways of Doing Things

My daughter, Toni Rothpletz, and I wrote The Young Adult’s Guide to Understanding Personalities for the post-boomer generation.  We refer to them as NewGens in the book.  Part of this post-boomer generation includes the millennials.

In a recent Inc article, Leigh Buchanan interviewed Amy Gutmann,  a political theorist from the University of Pennsylvania about millennials and their impact on the future of businesses.  To see this interview, click here.

In our book, we address how this group has been labeled as difficult, and at times has received some criticism.  I found the following question and answer from this Inc. article to be particularly interesting in that it shows the positive attributes of this often misunderstood group:

“Question: A lot of people seem to think the current crop of students — the so-called millennials — is a new species that must be trained and managed in new ways. What have you found works in the classroom?

One of the characteristics of millennials, besides the fact that they are masters of digital communication, is that they are primed to do well by doing good. Almost 70 percent say that giving back and being civically engaged are their highest priorities. We see this in the classes they select. For example, they flock to academically based service-learning courses. That’s where they get credit for doing projects out in the community, like helping the American Cancer Society to develop a new fundraising model. So to the extent that employers can, they should offer work that in some way contributes to society.”