I’m going to admit right here I’m a baby boomer (those born between 1946 and 1964).
As an older and wiser adult, I’ve realized how important it is to understand the generations coming up behind me and how they think, how they act and what motivates them. They are different than my generation, and the generations before me.
Growing up in southern Missouri, I got to experience a Mayberry kind of world. In high school during the Richard Nixon years, gas was 35 cents a gallon, a nice house was $25,000 and life expectancy was 70 years. Average hourly pay was $1.65. As they say, “We’ve come a long way, baby.”
It’s fascinating to see the change in the world at each generational turning point. The way we talk, what is important in our daily lives and how we buy our products – even how we do our jobs.
As a post World War II baby boomer, my generation was the one to reject traditional values. We wanted to change the world. Peace and love were our battle cries. We marched, we sat in, we elevated the drug culture and we were flower children. Woodstock was our symbolic Valhalla. It was very different from today, in values, interests and life direction.
What has this got to do with your business today? Your customers today and tomorrow don’t and won’t all think or make buying decisions the same way. They don’t and won’t have the same values and personal interests. If you don’t understand those differences, you’re going to miss sales opportunities and the ability to provide the products and services each generation wants and expects. And you’re going to have a hard time keeping your valuable employees.
While not understanding your customers can be detrimental to business, not understanding your employees can be just as serious. Our workforce is changing dramatically. By the year 2020, over 50 percent of our workforce will be millennials, aka Generation Y, born between 1980 and 2000. That’s just four years away.
What sets millennials apart from previous generations? Technology ranks right up at the top. Put a baby boomer in a room with someone of the Silent Generation (1925-45) and Generation X (1965-79) and you’ll see some drastic differences in the discussions of their lives and the culture of their generation. Put them in the same room with a millennial and the drastic difference in just the communication process itself will be quite apparent. If you can get the millennial off the phone long enough to stop tweeting or checking emails, Facebook or Snapchat, you will find they have grown up with Wi-Fi, laptops, smartphones, social media and have immediate access to an unbelievable wealth of information. It’s an incredible leap from my generations of Encyclopedia Britannica to today’s “Google it.”
The millennials are a critical generation to understand today. But down the road comes the next generation to learn about, the new silent generation, aka Gen Z. They most assuredly will have a new set of culture and buying habits to understand so we know how to motivate them to buy our product or motivate them as our employees. They will have new work habits and desires we must understand to maintain them.
Try to understand this: Millennials put a lot more importance on their personal needs than on their organization’s needs. The loyalty to the company of the silent generation and baby boomers is fading away. The long-term employee will be rare, unless you understand what motivates the millennial to stay put. They don’t like stiff rules and corporate environments. That’s not the world they have grown up in. Like their fast-paced electronics world, they like variety and constant action. They like to be entertained. Promotions are expected quickly. The opportunity to change roles, learn new things and keep moving forward motivates them. A pace that would have made previous generations stressed and uncomfortable is now the norm. Our “microwave society” has become the norm for millennials.
Employers must be constantly interacting with them with positive reinforcement and reaffirmation of their value to the company, offering new challenges and willing to look past the way things used to be done to how we can do it better. Without a variety of tasks, constant challenges and advancements, what does the millennial do? They move on to the next employer. That said, the successful employer will either find a way to meet the needs of those millennials or have a drawer full of new-hire prospects ready to step in when someone leaves for more exciting pastures.
The ability to obtain and retain the millennials and Gen Zers will be a critical component of the successful businesses of tomorrow. Understanding them will be key to accomplishing that goal.
The days of “my way or the highway” are over. You’ve got to shift the way you think.
David Arney is executive vice president and chief operating officer of Ollis/Akers/Arney, a 130-year-old business and insurance advisory firm with offices in Springfield and Branson. He can be reached at david.arney@ollisaa.com.
