MILLENNIALS IN THE WORK PLACE - WHY WE SEEM TO WANT IT ALL HERE & NOW, HEAR IT OUT

MILLENNIALS IN THE WORK PLACE -  WHY WE SEEM TO WANT IT ALL HERE & NOW, HEAR IT OUT

"Patience is a virtue", "Rome was not built in one day"....so goes a couple of adages in the English language both asserting the importance of patience and ability to stick out the course of time. Very well and true indeed, things happen all in good time and with time we gain invaluable experience and insight into the work we do and our existence in general.

However there is a generation to which this writer also belongs, the generation of MILLENNIALS! This generation it would appear is lampooned as the instant, impatient, ungrateful generation of clueless people who demand it all here and now.

When they come out of various professional and tertiary training programs and guilds they want occupations with immediate  "perks" which their predecessors had to "earn" through commitment and loyalty to their organisations during the course of time proving their worthiness to deserve such "perks".
As a result millennials are looked and frowned upon as impatient, ungrateful and too demanding.

The truth of the matter however is that what were perks back in the day are standard resources necessary for the execution of daily duties in the workplace given the rate at which things happen and decisions require to be made. Having a fully functional office with modern information communication technology needs not be a preserve of the C-suite and those who have been around long enough to earn it, the millennials do not look at these things as "perks"
which must be earned or deserved as the older guard does but to us they are just necessary tools and gadgets which we have grown up learning about and getting familiarised with. So there is nothing out of this world about them in their own right besides the high cost which most of them come at.

A good number of millennials are still foot soldiers in their respective areas of work, be that as it may they are full of untapped potential and energy which fearless and adaptive dynamic leaders from the older generations can tap and guide as mentors in the process have at their service  advanced savvy spartan-like foot soldiers who will execute with precision like machines and deliver desired results by default.

They are breaking at the seams with potential and it gets stifled by bureaucracy, red-tape and backward thinking on the part of some rigid seniors and executives who are stuck in the old ways of doing things. No wonder many workplace technologies preserved for a chosen high ranking executives often get hacked by these millennials because they are denied access to good quality technology within the same organisation.
Disclaimer: This example of hacking is NOT to condone workplace indiscipline, lack of integrity, ethics and morality but we see it very often in organisations.

Technological advancement needs to be rolled out in a balanced manner to ensure coherence in the management information system
of an organisation because a gap in the access and quality of available technology to people working within the same organisation albeit at different levels in the hierarchy creates barriers to flow of information and as a result affects decision making.

So the millennials need access as a necessity to execute well and deliver desired results rather than to feel important because like many things such as cars, housing and funds for further study  it is not a perk in our eyes. In some organisations you have to be very important to be given access to these things yet they are just plain necessary.

In this era of artificial intelligence and the fourth industrial revolution, job life-spans are becoming shorter and shorter hence the need for nimble and adept human capital. Gone are the days of joining organisations intending to serve many years and receive many long-service awards which are given in five-year periods. Obsolescence of skills is a reality nowadays and one ought to keep learning and gaining exposure to remain a useful and contributing member of organisations and society at large.

In light of the above, millennials therefore do not have the luxury of waiting and waiting for things to happen in the course of time as did the older generations whom circumstances in their entirety permitted to do so.

The world has become faster, more decisions are demanded these days in shorter time-frames than ever before and results are required even quicker, so it is for this reason that millennials seem to want it all here and now.
We are definitely not a bunch of spoilt, ungrateful brats. We are most definitely an energetic, driven and results oriented generation wanting to execute all the time which occasionally gets slowed down and frustrated by rigid ideologies of the past.

This drive to perform and make productive contribution in various disciplines is easily evident especially in sport, a case in point is a brilliant millennial Brazilian soccer and football maestro who plays with passion and delivers indisputable results, he however likes to party and club with fellow celebrities living the big life, when the press questioned his lifestyle as reckless and unbecoming this is what he had to say;

 “I think you have to start by looking at what I do on the pitch,” he told reporters “The moment I am off the field, it’s my personal time.
“I like to go out and have fun with my friends. I have family too so why can’t I go out to clubs? I can and I will.
“I am well aware what my duties are the next day. I am going to keep going out and I don’t see anything wrong with that.”

This is a confident youngster who is aware and conscious of what needs to be done as far as his work obligations are concerned, he makes good on those obligations very well and when he fails the world sees him weep bitterly on the field of play.
If the seniors could pause for a moment and try to understand the mentality and attitude of millennials a lot would be achieved through collaboration and blending of experience with skill,passion and energy for the greater good of organisations and all manner of work.

THE GOLDEN WORD FOUNTAIN - (TGWF)