What are the millennials looking for ?
Hiring and retaining talents is a perennial challenge for all SME. But what do we understand what the millennial workers are looking for ?
Understanding what the millennials are looking for and identifying the mismatches in the expectations vs what a career in an SME can offers, provides powerful insights on what could you as a leader in your company, close this mismatch gapping through job re-engineering, remuneration alignment, restructuring of benefits and the recalibration of the corporate values and culture.
In a recent 2019 Deloitte Millennial Global Mindset and Outlook Survey released on 21/5/2019 over 13,416 millennials aged 25 to 36 years old (Generation Z, born 1995 to 2002) across 42 countries revealed the following interesting findings on Singapore millennials:
- Singapore millennials more pessimistic, less satisfied with lives than peers around the world (SG: 80%, World: 67%).
- Overall lower score on Deloitte’s new mood index (an index that track how optimistic respondents are about key political, personal, environmental and socio-economic topics from year to year). (Mood index, SG: 35, World: 39) with women more pessimistic than men.
- Grimmer economic outlook on the next 12 months (% indicating improving outlook SG: 16%, World: 26%).
- Lower trust in the positive impact of businesses on the wider society (81%).
- Harder to get or change jobs in the future with automation and big data (SG: 61%, World: 46%).
- Top 5 millennials ambitions:
- Earning a high salary/Being wealthy (SG: 59%, World: 52%).
- Explore the world (SG: 58%).
- Buy your home (SG: 48%).
- Contribute to the community (36%).
- Have children or starting a family (35%).
- Top 3 concerns:
- Income inequality (28%).
- Unemployment (27%).
- Climate change (22%).
From a talent focus perspective, the following are some of the points of consideration in your next millennial hire:
- Create and reinforce positive vibes on the impact that your company is making on the community via CSR, sustainability reporting and build a business around a sustainable model around the whole community ecology system.
- Set clear and implementable corporate values on CSR and incorporate corporate impact programmes that involve all employees.
- Make diversity and inclusion part of your corporate DNA.
- Set top priority on reskilling and retraining and openly address concerns on job displacement on the back of automation, AI and big data.
- Lead the way how the jobs will be re-designed in the future to address the job security concerns of the millennials.
- Re-align remuneration package to give emphasis and weightage to pay component vs work life balance to provide employees with time to start a family, involve in community works and holidays to see the world.