New Generations of Employees

An industry has arisen to study, analyze, and make pronouncements about “Gen Y-ers” or Millennials, those who began entering the workforce shortly after the turn of the twenty-first century. No generational impact since perhaps the end of World War II with its returning veterans has been greater. In the United States, for example, this group is made up of more than 70 million people and constitutes the largest living generation.

This generation was raised in relative affluence and stability by doting parents born in the wake of World War II. More important, Millennials take for granted and know how to exploit the power of information and communication technology. Relatively speaking, they have been denied little. Their achievements, no matter how insignificant, have been praised frequently by fawning parents from the United States to China. In fact, the effect has been magnified in China under a regime seeking to limit families to one child. It has produced a generation with somewhat different expectations regarding wealth and personal development as well as a heightened social idealism. Furthermore, in the words of one manager, “they have expectations, but they have the highest expectations first and foremost for themselves.”^[9]