Over 70% of Gen Z's and Millennials are Planning to Leave their Jobs! Are You? (Episode 146)

Did you know that over 70% of Gen Z and Millennials plan to quit their jobs within the next year? This alarming statistic underscores an urgent need for organizations to foster cultures that promote growth and resonate with the career aspirations of these younger generations. I'm excited to share insights from my recent trip to Universal Studios, drawing parallels to the vast resources and challenges these generations face in the workplace today.

In this engaging discussion, we'll debunk common stereotypes about Gen Z and Millennials, while highlighting their unique traits and needs.  We're excited to navigate this crucial conversation about the future of work, providing you with insights to better understand, engage, and retain Gen Z and Millennial talent in your organization. Don't miss this enlightening episode and remember to share it with your network!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

Hello friends, welcome to your motivational Gen Z and Millennial Expert podcast. My name is Dr Jason Wiggins and I am the host. It is great to be here. Thank you so much. You had a great weekend.

Speaker 1: 0:23

For those who may not know, I do live in Southern California, specifically residing here in San Diego, california, and you know, within about two, two and a half hours we have Universal Studios, hollywood, seaworld, san Diego Zoo, just to name a few spots. And yesterday, actually I should say on Saturday and Sunday, my wife and my young son, hunter, went to Universal Studios, had a fantastic time. If you ever have a chance to travel out to Universal Studios and go on the studio tour, that is really the highlight. You get to see the backdrops of famous movies like Back to the Future, jaws, war of the Worlds, the crash site where they have a plane that literally they took apart and they made it look like it was crashed. It was an amazing time. Of course, they have rides and everything else. So, again, if you ever have a chance, you'll definitely want to go.

Speaker 1: 1:24

So today's topic we're going to talk about today is organizations need to get it right, and by saying organizations need to get it right, what I mean is the cost is going to be through the moon if they continue to lose Gen Z and Millennials. As I mentioned, I think, recently on a podcast, over 70% of Gen Z and Millennials are planning to leave their current organization within the next year, and I actually posted this on a social media site and I had a CEO come back to me and stated you know, you don't really need to be an alarmist, most of this is generic and it's simply not true. I responded back unfortunately it is true for these reasons, and by the time companies figure it out, it's going to be too late. They've already lost that Gen Z and Millennial talent and then they're going to have to spend 50 to 100,000 of dollars, depending on the position, to go ahead, recruit higher on board and train. Therefore, organizations have a big problem because you, as a Gen Z and Millennial, are going to have all of the resources that will allow you to find the right opportunity.

Speaker 1: 2:52

And let's kind of go back in the past and we're going to talk about Baby Boomers and specifically my generation, which is Gen X. Again, gen X is born between the ages of 1965, excuse me, the years 1965 and 1979. Roughly. We grew up when there were only three channels on the TV and we had to use an antenna in many cases just to get those channels. Therefore, and then Baby Boomers they actually were born during the advent of the TV, so in their early years they were just getting their first television sets. So the whole point of this is there's a lot less resources and technology and whereabouts back then where companies could exploit and take that for granted. Therefore, as Millennial Gen Zs, it is your opportunity and your opportunity to be advantageous with the resources available. And if organizations are not going to get it right, then it's going to be up to you to exploit that. And if organizations don't want you to quit, then they need to come up with a game plan on what to do, and that's very concerning.

Speaker 1: 4:23

As our CEO stated later he thought I was being an alarmist the reality is 70% of Gen Z and millennials are planning to leave their current job. So what does that mean for organizations and companies? It might have only took a $5,000 or $10,000 or a shift in culture or a shift in technology improvements, or doing the right thing for your employees and being a person with good communication at a leadership skills and have the ability to cultivate and navigate your team to wanna be exceptional, by ensuring that they have all the resources, they're motivated and they receive rewards for doing a good job. And this is not the old days, this is not the baby boomers working. This is not. Hey, you have a job, be thankful. So today we're gonna talk about not only organizations needing to learn how to succeed and cultivate an environment and a culture that stymies the growth I should say, doesn't stymie the growth of Gen Z and millennials, but cultivates culture that breeds success, while Gen Zs and millennials have to look at this and go okay, are they doing that? If they're not, then I can either help them or I can continue to find another path that is going to ensure that I receive the tools, the resources and the path to continue to make sure that my career is on the path that I have plans for. So I need to ultimately maximize my opportunities and my skill level. So organizations need to do the right things. But if you are a current employee or you're on the job market, what are the things that you're looking to do to ultimately improve your stock? I use the word stock loosely, but think of all of these professional ball players. They're free agents. They're on the free agent market. What are they doing? They're looking for the best opportunity, the best opportunity to maximize their profits, their work-life balance, their ability to live and work in a situation that is going to be best suited for them. They get the pick in a lot of cases where they wanna play the sport of choice, and that's the same thing that you, as Gen Z and millennials, have the opportunity to do. We are not the baby boomers, we are not the Gen Xs, we are millennials and Gen Zs that have opportunities, have resources, we have everything at the tip of our fingers, so we have inspiration to improve.

Speaker 1: 7:24

Again, the stigma is that Gen Zs, that millennials, are the same. They're lazy, they don't have the ability, they're coddled. Well, guess what? Gen Z and millennials? They're not even alike in a lot of cases. Actually, gen Z is sometimes more like Gen X. Why? Because Gen X are their parents in many cases, and Gen X were latchkey kids. They had to rely on themselves, they didn't fall for certain schemes, they didn't believe in certain things. So they have actually instilled that into their Gen Z child or as they've grown to hey, everything is not true, you don't need to believe everything you hear. And so they're not exactly like millennials. Millennials, they're not lazy, they're opportunistic, and so that's the difference. They're a lot like their baby boomer parents.

Speaker 1: 8:23

Because baby boomers, what happened to them? They worked for their same job for 25, 30 years and guess what? A recession happened and they lost their jobs After 25 to 30 years of being loyal to the soil of an organization that they thought cared about them. But that wasn't the reality. They didn't care, they only cared about profit. And to this day that is the same. Most organizations only care about profit. But that's understandable, because profit drives the bus of the organization from point A to point Z. So we get it. But organizations also understand that care about profit, that profit is affected by retention Retention of resources, retention of employees, and those are the things that are really front and center for most organizations.

Speaker 1: 9:28

They understand they need to drive culture, they need to drive technology, they need to ensure that onboarding, hiring, training is optimal. Because what happens to those individuals that are not satisfied within the first 30 days of onboarding? Simple they quit, they will leave. If you don't provide a great organization culture, you don't provide the great onboarding. That's why you have to have those weekly check-ins. You have to ensure that they feel extremely welcomed. I worked for organizations that tried to understand that it's important to welcome the new employees, but they fell short. They talked to talk but didn't walk to walk. And so what does that leave? That leaves opportunities for Gen Z and Millennials, and now, as I spoke earlier, we're going to talk about those opportunities.

Speaker 1: 10:30

So how do you go ahead and strike first? Well, first of all, take an inventory of what you like about your current organization, or, if you're currently looking for an organization, what did you like about your last job? So number one is take an inventory. That inventory can be a self-assessment about what you are looking for in your next job, your next career. Are you looking to be an entrepreneur? Are you looking to go ahead and be a freelancer? You don't want to put all your eggs in one basket. You want to ensure that you have revenue coming from different sources. You have profits, and that's okay too, but you do have to take an inventory to see what your talents are going to best reflect, because in a lot of cases, you've worked for several jobs where you've continued to develop different type of characteristics and job understandings that are going to help you as you decide what you're going to do within the next job opportunity, career opportunity, entrepreneurial type of opportunity, whatever it may be.

Speaker 1: 11:46

So number one is take an inventory, take an assessment of what you want in life. What you view as important is that work-life balance, is that the ability to have your own hours, be your own boss. Are you looking for a good boss that will demonstrate that they care about you, the organization cares about you? Are you looking for the ability to have sustainability, diversity? I mean, these are a lot of things that are important to the Gen Z and Millennials and you have to take an assessment. What are you looking for? Is it purely money? Well, I can tell you, for most Gen Z and Millennials, it's not about money. It's about other things, and but the money does help. So let's not forget, we want to check all the boxes.

Speaker 1: 12:35

Number two is if you don't have all the tools that you determine you need, then go ahead. Find free online courses. You can find courses that are going to help you to be able to navigate new opportunities and to be able to get that training that you may not have. So that's number two. Number three is find the companies that you want to work for. So you've already took the inventory, you did the assessment, you did the extra training, you did the courses. You might have done side gigs on top of it as you were looking for other jobs if you were unemployed or if you're currently employed. You're still doing those things on the side and so if you continue to do that, then you find the company that truly cares about the environment, climate control, adversity, all of these different things that are important. We need to basically take an allocation of what you determine you want from your next company and then look for the companies that are doing that. Is it the Google? Is it the Amazon? Are you going to have to work 60 plus hours a week, and what trajectory do you want in your next job? Is your goal to be CEO? I can.

Speaker 1: 13:57

I can tell you from my research that Gen Z's they don't desire middle management in a lot of cases. Why? Because they've seen their parents do middle management, and middle management is is hard, it's stressful and you usually get it from both ends. You get it from the line level employees and then you have it coming down from the senior executives. Therefore it's it's not always the most enviable spot. So right now, we've talked about taking an inventory, we talked about training, taking additional courses.

Speaker 1: 14:31

We talked about finding different organizations that you want to work for and then, once you've done that, then it's time to start reviewing your resume and how it's going to work towards that job. Are you going to need a resume expert to review it to say, hey, this is the job I want, this is the company I want. I would like you to curtail this resume to be able to specify what they desire within their next candidate, and then you find out from there how can they help. You then utilize software is like job scan, where you can do keywords. So you want to look at the overall job guidelines and copy and paste what they're looking for in the job scan. Then job scan, the software will stay Okay, this is how you should include it in your resume. And so then, when AI comes and looks at your your resume, it has all the key indicators that that organization wants. So that's.

Speaker 1: 15:36

Number four is finding somebody or other resources to get the resume to where you like it. And then number five is land that job, land that opportunity, and then, when you land that opportunity, celebrate and then find out. You know what the company you know continues to offer and hopefully, when you decided that was the organization that you wanted to work for, they actually are what you thought. Because you invested all that time, all of that training, the resume, help and, whatever it may be, everything else that encompasses with all the interviews, you landed your dream opportunity. So it's time to celebrate, and this now goes back to that organization. It is now up to the organization to determine how they can keep you. You've done all the legwork on your end. You're a fantastic employee, you're dedicated, and now it's up to that company to ensure that you're not another statistic within the next year. You're not one of those 70 plus percent that are going to lead the organization. Now it's time to invest in keeping you. That may invest in hundreds of thousands of dollars to, to you know, utilize all the hiring process, the applicant process, throughout all their interviewing. Remember, you have to use all that management HR they're taking time away from other things to interview all of the individuals that were candidates for this job. That takes time. They lost the knowledge of the last person that left. Now they had to retrain. I mean, companies need to get it right, it right, and it starts with understanding.

Speaker 1: 17:37

Going back to what that CEO told me in the posting he said don't be an alarmist. I've been an alarmist as somebody that is making up things that are not true and getting everybody worried, but I can tell you with 100 percent of surety that millennials and Gen Z's over 70 percent will leave the organization within the next year if they're not taken care of. And they're not concerned about unemployment, they're not concerned about people losing their jobs, because they understand that they've seen their parents, they've seen their baby boomers, gen X parents, losing their jobs, being loyal to the organization, to be basically spit out. Well, I can tell you for certainty that Gen Z's and millennials are not going to allow an organization to run their life. Life they live Excuse me, they work to live, not live to work. And that's key.

Speaker 1: 18:47

Because when you realize that you want that life flexibility, you want to be able to have work and life balance, because life happens. It doesn't mean you have to work in the morning, the afternoon, at night or whatever it may be. Whatever you find the availability of how you're best suited for the time you should work. As long as you put it in the work time, you're meeting the goals of the organization. Why should you have to sit at your desk for nine hours at work, punching out for a 30 minute break, having two ten minute lunch breaks and then watching the clock? Because usually those employees, by the last hour they hear tick talk, tick talk, while they're not even focused on the last hour of their job. They're looking at the clock, going almost out of here, and on a Friday they're probably looking at the last two hours of the day and going I'm almost out of here. But when you have that work life flexibility, the ability to work remote, hybrid, whatever works for you as an organization and an employee, then you understand, you feel valued. Most organizations had the ability to be able to Work with you as an employee, to either be hybrid or remote, and that's something that all Organizations have to be aware of.

Speaker 1: 20:16

And so, again, let's recap what we talked about today. We talked about how Gen X and Gen Y had the, had minimal resources. We grew up with just the advent of the television or only half three channels. We had very few opportunities. We looked for jobs in a newspaper, and some of you might think of a newspaper as an e-news paper. When you you get on your phone and you look at it. That's fine too, but we actually had physical papers. We looked in. Those were the ads. It would say help, wanted dishwasher, and so we only had those type of ways to find a job. Now the resources are abundant. All Of the marbles are in the basket for a potential Applicants or somebody looking for a job.

Speaker 1: 21:08

You know everything about the company before you walk into an interview. You have all of these different websites. You have Glassdoor. You have indeed you have career bliss. All of these websites will tell you what Employees think of their employee that have worked for them or are continuing to work for them. And then you have to decide if that's something that you want to go into as you start the interview process. And so, as we do that, we have to plan for our dream opportunity.

Speaker 1: 21:40

You want to work for Google? Then Find out by taking assessment, doing the inventory of what you want within a company. Do you want to be? Do you want to be flexible with the project You're working on? Do you want to have inclusion, diversity? You know talk about how can the organization help the environment. Are you going to volunteer for opportunities with the organization? Are they going to, are they going to be able to provide you with the resources and tools? So you look for the type of position that is going to work for you.

Speaker 1: 22:19

And then number two is training courses. Find ways to improve your stock. You're a free agent. You have the ability to work for any company that you want, as long as you have the right training, the right characteristics. And that leads us to Number three is finding your organization that you want to work for. You did the assessment, you did the training. Now it's time to put that into the organization, put that to work within the organization you want. And then, by doing that, number four is celebrate the win, celebrate getting the job. And number five is how can that employee keep you with the organization? What are they going to do differently? Are they going to be able to do the right things? Are they going to utilize some of that profit and ensure that they're retaining and motivating and reinvesting in their employees? Because if it's a five or $10,000 raise, if that keeps the employee happy, or a hybrid or remote work environment keeps the employee happy, the company, the overall organization, will say thousands of dollars in hiring and retaining that knowledge.

Speaker 1: 23:53

Think about customer service. When you call somebody and you have a regular service provided that you talk to on a regular basis, and they're gone and they have somebody else, then they're gone. You lose that customer service. How great is it to know that, on a daily basis or a weekly basis, whenever you contact customer service within that given organization, you're going to talk to somebody that is specific for your account. That just demonstrates that they like working for their job, they like working for the employer that employs them.

Speaker 1: 24:29

I am excited about today's conversation. I'm here to help any way I can. I can be reached at jason, at jenzandmillennialexpertcom, and I'd be happy to answer any questions you have. Please like, subscribe and share, if you like, this podcast with your friends and family and I hope I can continue to touch people within the scope of this podcast. And thank you again. I am Dr Jason Wiggins. I am your motivational Gen Z and Millennial Expert. Thank you everyone. Have a great day, take care and we'll see you on the next podcast, which will likely be next Monday. As you know, sometimes I will go ahead and sprinkle one if I can find some great time for a great topic within the week. So thank you, take care, bye, bye.