The Millennial Connect

Millennials may be a cohort with unique expectations and aspirations, but leaders can win them over by building bonds of trust and through candid communication.

- Avik Chanda

If you conduct a survey of industry leaders around what their top ‘people problems’ are, then a large majority will concur that while hiring the right talent is the biggest issue, a close second is the challenge of retaining that same talent. Probe this a bit further, and you will learn that it basically boils down to the millennials who already occupy the single largest segment in the Indian workforce, the figure increasing with each passing year. Millennials, you will be told, come with a whole baggage of expectations. And a reputation for being distracted, insubordinate, money-minded, impulsive, arrogant, and self-centered, to the point of being narcissistic—all of which result in, amongst other things, a consistently high attrition rate across organizations.

There is this common grouse among many senior leaders in the industry: employee loyalty is fast disappearing in today’s workplace. New-age employees simply do not seem to believe in it. But rather than accept this scornfully as a fait accompli, leaders need to start asking the right questions. If there is really an employee loyalty issue with millennials, then what are the reasons for it? And what can be done by company stakeholders to address—and hopefully minimize—this problem?