THE TELEGRAPH: What's the problem with millennials in the workplace?

Description

Professor Cary Cooper of the Manchester Business School agrees with the CBI that some young graduates do seem to be lacking in social skills: “They have been raised on Facebook and texting. The way you develop your social skills is by face to face interaction and this generation has had the least of that.”

But he maintains young graduates are every bit as enthusiastic and eager to learn as previous generations. They just have little interest in kowtowing to traditional management structures and are viewed with suspicion by bosses because they don’t expect to stay at the same company for long.

“The new graduates have seen older employees, who have been at their companies for many years, dismissed and treated like disposable assets. They are trying to protect themselves. So in other words, that tradional contract of employment has been broken for that generation. They don’t have the same company loyalties that were expected in the past. 

 

“Senior managers are hanging on to the old ways and expect these young people to act and behave in the way they did when they were picked up at their university milk rounds in the Eighties. As a result, I don’t think employers know how to use them. But if you push their to the best of their capabilities, they will still come up with the goodies.”