Millennials: a new concept of work?

Being millennium is not so much an age group, it's more a state of mind. This state of mind is based on three pillars:

• One, humility, accepting the fact that you may not have the truth, that others know more than you, or that at some point you know more than they do, and to share this information.

• Secondly, it is to be able to learn continuously, to accept that you may be behind in terms of knowledge.

• And third, and certainly most important, is to get up in the morning to give meaning to what you are doing.

What do the millennials want?

There's not just a type of millennium. There are different trends, but we see that more and more, that Slashing, the fact that we can have several small jobs, already present in the United States, forced, or voluntarily. But we can see that the fact that we are less and less dependent on a person or an employer is a real underlying trend. In a few years, up to 50% of the working population will become freelancer/slasher. The point is to be truly free, to be nomadic and to be able to work completely autonomously. Platforms like Upwork, Fiverr, or these kinds of things that are highly specialized, you can do small missions that allow you to manage your time, so this good balance between private and professional life. The person is more interested in working to live than in life for work.

Nomadic surfers?

There is clearly a difference between reality and theory, the fact that you can be free to work whenever you want with van and kitesurfing, as you'll see on Instagram, and reality, unfortunately, there is a gap. Since today there is a financial reality that makes the majority of freelancers really on the border in financial terms, and we see that the price of freedom has a real financial price.

Why do companies need so many millennials?

Today's millennials embody tomorrow's model, they're rather progressive. There are other social classes as well, but the millennials are part of that and therefore integrate millennials and this system in companies is essential. On the one hand there is the technological innovation, but also the social innovation that every company is obliged to have if it wants to survive tomorrow.

What makes a millennium valuable?

So today there are two types of skills, hard skills, technical skills that you can learn very quickly on the internet, very quickly in 6 months you can become a junior data scientist. On the other hand, what is important to develop is to continue the continuous training, because in the technological universe after 12 months we are outdated, we talk about the obsolescence of knowledge and especially developing an attitude in the background, what we call soft skills such as empathy, it's really this accumulation of the three that makes recruitment today complex.

How can I attract them?

So today all companies to attract and retain talent really need to have a model where we can stimulate, not a system of dominance with "small leaders", to be able to stimulate, to put ourselves on the same level as the people we welcome into the company, the millennia are interested in the concepts of liberated companies and to be able to participate, feel useful, feel involved in the values of society. Some are sensitive to the environment, others are sensitive to more social causes and are therefore really able to contribute to the feeling of being useful and especially in a system where there is no dominance, there is no hierarchy that is imposed, but a natural hierarchy with managers who encourage rather than reprimand or force.

Keep them for more than 3 years: mission impossible?

In terms of productivity, I think that after three years we have done the trick, especially in technological environments that evolve very fast and models that evolve very fast. I think it's good for both the employee and the employer that after a certain period of time, be it three or four years, the collaboration just stops, while there may still be a link with the company, but it's good that the person continues to be stimulated by other tasks, other projects or other people.

Final advice

If you have to hire people, the first thing we at Inoopa refuse to do is hire people who need ego, power, and recognition, because it is today's "little leaders" who are the most harmful and the least valuable. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)