It’s no secret that millennials have gotten a bad rap in the workplace. According to CNN, the average millennial will have had four different jobs by the age of 32. Millennials tend to stay at those jobs less than 3 years. This causes some tension with employers who are used to a model where your company carries through your golden years.
“This idea that you land an entry-level job at a company like GE or IBM and then work your way up the totem pole for the rest of your career, and the company guarantees job security to the employee, is no longer affordable in this much more competitive economy,” says Ben Casnocha, author of The Startup of You, in a recent Heleo interview.
So how can employers and young employees reach an understanding? Casnocha has a few tips:
1) Employers need to realize employees can add value without dedicating their whole life to a company
“Both sides, employees and companies, need to develop a new relationship where the company looks at the employee and says, ‘Okay, if you help make our company more adaptive, more innovative,’ which is the ultimate imperative today, ‘We will help transform your career, long term.’ The employee says in turn, ‘I won’t be here my whole life. If you help transform my career, I will help transform the company.’
2) Employees should be thoughtful about how they articulate their career aspiration and transparent with management on how long they intend to stay
“If you’re an employee, you should complete an honorable tour of duty at a company and put in a meaningful amount of time to complete real work to have significant accomplishments. Just be transparent about how long that mission might take.”
3) Both employees and employers should accept the notion of personal brands
“You want to develop a personal brand. It’s helpful if the company and your manager embrace those instincts. We argue in The Alliance that it’s imperative for a company to embrace those instincts because it’s entrepreneurial employees that develop the next big idea for your organization. If you want to take a risk in the company, you need employees who can take risks.”
