on February 20, 2018
Millennials often get a bad rap. They’re quickly written off as lazy, technology-obsessed job-hoppers who spend all their money on travel and avocado toast. While I’ve personally found these stereotypes to be largely exaggerated (and don’t forget, Millennials have entered the workforce during one of the toughest times in the job market), there’s always a grain of truth behind the stereotypes. Yes, Millennials are less loyal to their employers than Baby Boomers (partially because many companies are less loyal to their employees), but is that necessarily a bad thing? Can we actually learn a thing or two from these twenty- and thirty-somethings?
I think we can, particularly when it comes to defining WHO we are.
What do I mean by that? In past generations, people have put a lot of stock into what you do, instead of who you are. Essentially, your job defined you. Your happiness was directly tied to your job title.
Because of this, I’ve witnessed people in the Baby Boomer and Gen X generations work themselves to death, with the sole goal of retiring comfortably. Ironically, these are the same people who retire and simply don’t know what to do with themselves. They’ve been married to their jobs for so many years, they don’t know how to separate their jobs from their selves.
This is a problem. We are more than the things we do in an office cubical. We are people.
I am more than a financial advisor. I am Heidi.
That’s the lesson we can learn from Millennials. They’re not letting themselves be defined by a nine-to-five occupation and they’ve realized that there’s much more to life than work. That’s why they’ve decided they don’t want to wait until they’re retired to travel; they want to do it right now. They’ve decided they want flexible hours, the ability to work from home, and a workplace environment that is more fun than tedious. They’ve also decided they want to work for employers who have a heart and care about the world at large (which feeds into their need to fill a larger Purpose in life—a need which I believe all people share, but not all address).
All of these demands are getting employers to change their ways and incorporate more flexibility and altruism into the fabric of their workplace. To me, that’s a good thing.
I’m certainly not advocating for play days instead of work days; a good work ethic is still valuable and necessary. What I am saying is that it is healthy to define oneself by more than your job AND workplaces should acknowledge the humanness of their workers and allow greater flexibility for them to be, well, human.