The first wave of the Millennial Generation-born between the early 1980s and 2002-is just graduating from college and entering the work force. Employers, meantime, are bracing for some of the biggest management challenges they’ve ever faced: Integrating the most demanding and most protected generation in history into a workplace shaped by the driven baby-boom generation. Like them or not, millennials are America’s future work force. They are actually a larger group than the boomers-about 80 million vs. 76 million.
The millennials are a complex group-although they’re hard-working achievers, most millennials don’t excel at leadership and independent problem solving. They want the freedom and flexibility of a virtual office but they also want rules and responsibilities t be spelled out explicitly. “It’s all about me,” might seem to be the mantra of this demanding bunch of young people, yet they also tend to be very civic-minded and philanthropic.