Decoding the Career Exodus: Understanding Why Gen Z and Millennials are Leaving the Corporate World (Episode 145)

Ever wonder why Gen Z and Millennials are rushing for the exit doors of the corporate world, leaving gaping holes in our workforce? Dr. Jason Wiggins, a leading authority on these generations, is stepping into our virtual studio to help us decode this enigma. Dr. Wiggins brilliantly unspools this complicated thread, bringing to light the impending exodus of our younger workforce – a staggering 70% of Gen Z and Millennials are planning to vacate their posts by 2024. We talk about the financial hemorrhage these departures can cause to organizations and how the loss of their innovative minds can erode the cultural dynamics within teams.

Tune in to discover the real reasons behind these career nomads' restlessness and their audacious disregard of a crumbling economy. Our conversation also takes a detour debunking myths about these cohorts; no, they're not lazy, entitled, or afraid of hard work. Dr. Wiggins provides sharp insights into the aspirations of these generations for work-life balance, flexibility, and opportunities to chart their own course – with a whopping 73% of Gen Z showing an entrepreneurial streak. We wrap up this enlightening chat exploring how organizations can emulate a 'run-your-own-business' atmosphere to retain these indispensable assets. Ready to rethink your strategies to tap into the potential of Gen Z and Millennials? Don't miss out on this insightful episode.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

Good day everyone. My name is Dr Jason Wiggins and I am your Gen Z and Millennial expert. I hope everybody is doing great today. Today, I think it's really important to discuss. What is on everyone's mind within corporate America and all the different generations is what are we going to do with the Gen Z and Millennials continuing to leave the workforce? How do we retain and maximize this knowledge, motivate these individuals? Therefore, we can continue to have them work for our organizations. When we lose, specifically, gen Z and Millennials, we're losing that knowledge, we're losing that part of our culture. We're losing significant amounts of money, because every time you lose an employee, it can cost 15, 20, upwards of a hundred thousand of dollars, not only in retention or hiring fees or recruiters, but the knowledge that walks out that door, and that is going to be a continued issue unless we do something about it. I'm here to help with the understanding, the focus and let's stop the cycle of them leaving out the doors. First of all and foremost, gen Z and Millennials are an extremely intelligent, savvy, hard-working groups that in many cases, can be misunderstood by other generations, or even their own generation, for that matter.

Speaker 1: 2:07

In 2024, as we continue to move to next year, over 70% of Gen Z and Millennials will are planning to leave the workforce. Let me say that again so it can sink in. Over 70% of Gen Z and Millennials are planning to leave the current employee and with that said, that does not include those that are currently brushing up their resume with thoughts of maybe leaving their organization, but have yet to do so or made that decision. Let's go back to last year, 2022. Remember we had the mass resignation. I believe it was around November of last year, and the reason why that is is the economy is not doing well, but people are not scared. Gen Z and Millennials are not scared of the economy. Why? Because they understand what their value is, how they continue to learn new skills and what they can bring to an organization.

Speaker 1: 3:30

As hiring organizations and HR professionals, we don't tend to focus as much on the longevity of how long an employee's been with the organization. Some may agree or disagree with that, but the facts remain that it's going to be very typical that an employee will last one, maybe two years, and over one year by many Gen Z and millennials is considered long-term employment. That's again over one year. And that leads us to why is Gen Z and millennials continuing to lead the workforce as a Gen X or baby rumor. You may not understand and after continuous research over the last 15 plus years, I have a very good understanding about why they're leaving the workforce.

Speaker 1: 4:37

But we have to understand the characteristics of each individual and each generation. Let's keep in mind that there are scenarios where not everything about a generation is true. Some will say that the millennials were lazy, but when you say that you are talking about a whole cohort, a generation, and that's simply not true, or you say they're entitled, or Gen Zs don't want to work for an organization, these are all cases where simply it's not true. It may be true for some members within the generations, but it's not true for all. And that's the same thing for baby boomers, gen X, they're all the same. We all have different characteristics that may be similar to other groups, but do not actual cater to all the generations, and that's important.

Speaker 1: 5:41

Now, as we continue to talk about what's different between Gen Z and millennials, well, gen Z, they are looking for work-life balance. They're looking to run their own business. 73% of Gen Zs want to have their own business. They don't want to work for somebody. Why is that? It's not because they don't like working for corporations, it's not that they don't like to have a boss, but they want flexibility, they want opportunities, they want to continue to create their own path, work remotely, they want to be valued.

Speaker 1: 6:29

And when you're able to find the elements within your own business, you have to work harder. Sometimes, you have to be able to go to the grind to be able to make an impact on your own organization. So, therefore, why is organizations, why can't we instill that same sort of own your own business type of mentality within our corporations? We can, but we have to think differently. Thinking differently is the difference from retaining and minimize the attrition within our organization and maximizing our resources and our knowledge base to just losing great employees, valued employees. And then what do we say as they walk out the door? They just didn't want to work hard, or they just didn't understand, or they or they or they. At some point, as hiring managers, consultants, hr generalists, we have to look ourselves in the mirror and go, wait a minute. Maybe, just maybe, they are not the ones at fault. Maybe, as an organization, a culture, employee engagement, empowerment, manager, providing opportunities and developments these are the ways where we can maximize the strengths of Gen Z millennials and empower them to do so much greater.

Speaker 1: 8:14

There's a statistic out right now that very few Gen Zs are interested in middle management. Why? Because middle management gets a poor rap overall. They get bottled from the top and they get bottled from the bottom, so all the pressure typically falls on middle management and they don't want to have that stress. And that goes back to the mental makeup. Being aware of mental awareness, that is something that is really important to Gen Zs. As well as important to millennials Is for organizations to be aware of mental exhaustion, being prepared to provide resources for mental illness and mental illness, and that is something that, as a Gen X myself, or baby boomers used to say why don't you just buckle it up, buttercup?

Speaker 1: 9:15

You know, just go to work and let it go. Well, that's not the way of doing things and that mentality is the mentality that is going to be the difference between retaining and ultimately losing key members of your organization. So that goes back to think differently. By thinking differently, we can provide resources, we can provide work-life balance, we can provide remote opportunities, mental illness help. I mean there are so many different expectations of what millennials and Gen Zs have in the workforce and as professionals, as managers, as owners of organizations. We are going to be at a tipping point here in the very near future. Why? Because, as we go into 2024, 2025, the workforce is gonna be made up of primarily Gen Zs and millennials, because right now, our current baby boomer are between the ages of 60 and 78. So there's gonna be a continued focus on retirement.

Speaker 1: 10:31

Gen X, who was born from 19, excuse me, it was born from 1969 to 1980. Or I should say they are the ones that are the smallest group. So, again, they were born from roughly the mid-60s to around 1980. And that workforce is the smallest. But the baby boomers were the largest for a very long time. But they're continuing to leave the workforce, which leaves millennials and Gen Z.

Speaker 1: 11:08

And remember, they don't wanna be part of middle managers. They don't wanna work where they have to go to the office every day. They wanna work at a coffee shop, they wanna work at home, they wanna work at different times, at hours of the day. But it's not because they're not gonna work hard. They're gonna work just as hard, but they're going to do it in a way that maximizes their work-life balance. And with that, we have to continue to reinvent ways to run organizations. Yes, we're always going to need line-level employees, you need manufacturers, you need service sectors. You're going to need that as we get into the next 10, 20 years and we pass that, ai, robotics will take over some of those industries, with approximately 19% of jobs by 2050 will be via AI and robots, but that's a different topic for a different day. That we need to worry about in the next 20 plus years.

Speaker 1: 12:15

But for now, we need to find ways to get the workforce in touch with our organizations, ensuring that we have a well-built culture. We have the abilities as managers to cultivate and ensure that we are having daily, weekly, monthly, semi-annual meetings with our employees. It doesn't mean they need a raise every time, but what it does mean is they need to know where they stand with the organization. They need to be able to know that, what development plans they have in store for them, because, ultimately, money is not the most important and if there's any managers out there or leaders that believe that is the case, please review.

Speaker 1: 13:06

You'll find out that it's about the relationship that the employee has with their immediate manager. As you might have heard this cliche before, employees don't leave organizations, they leave managers. Why? Because the manager did not do enough to cultivate a relationship. It doesn't mean you have to be friends, but it does mean you have to show as a manager that you're going to value, that you're going to support and that you have the best interest of the employee at heart. If you can do that, then you'll be able to develop that trust factor that demonstrates that you understand, you're there, you'll motivate, you'll help and before they walk out that revolving door that has been what we've been used to for the last several years they will come up to you with that trusted relationship and they will state that I have this opportunity. I'd like to maybe move on, but this is your opportunity to demonstrate what you've done, how you can continue to help and see if you can throw a lifeline to that employee to save them. And then you won't continue to lose 1500s of thousands of dollars, whatever that number is, depending on the impact of the employee, the hiring process, the knowledge loss.

Speaker 1: 14:45

These are things that are concerning and scary and keep many managers up at night, because when you lose an employee, you have to get with your recruiter, get with maybe an outside recruiter, post a job, do all the interviewing, go through the hiring process to maybe find the applicant that you liked is either no longer available or turns down your offer. Then you have to continue to go through the interview process until you find the right candidate. I've seen organizations go months and months without being able to replace a candidate that they have or a previous employee that they have. Why? There could be a myriad of reasons. It could be due to the stringent hiring practices they have, not finding the right caliber of individual, or this could be other implications. Maybe your organization has a bad stigma to it, has a bad reputation and people don't want to work for that organization. These are things that sometimes organizations aren't even aware of, and that is why we have to look at the big picture. The big picture is it's important to motivate, retain and cultivate your current employee base, specifically if they're Gen Z and Millennials, and having that understanding across that generation gap between Baby Boomers, generation X, millennials and Gen Z, and soon as about born around 2010 and after, we're going to have Generation Alpha within the next 10 plus years. So then we're going to have still potentially four to five key generations still working in the workforce. I hope today you were able to get a good understanding about the significance and importance of Gen Z and Millennials leaving the workforce and how it's going to impact your business if you're not willing to make the steps and do what it takes. This is a call to action, because if you don't act, then you're going to run into a big pitfall here within the next year or two.

Speaker 1: 17:05

My name is Dr Jason Wiggins. I'm the Gen Z and Millennial Expert. I'm here to help any way I can. I can be reached via Jason at GenZ and MillennialExpertcom. Again, that's Jason at GenZ and MillennialExpertcom. I'm available to help, I'm available for speaking engagements and ultimately, I want to be a resource to help you and your business through these difficult times. So, thank you, have a great day and I look forward to connecting soon. Take care, bye, bye.