When it comes to engaging Millennials in the workforce, employment purpose and meaning are no longer nice to haves.

On the last day of the National HR Summit, Good2Give (and all the other delegates) were introduced to Sanitarium’s Catherine Frogley and her Millennial daughter.

Not that Frogley’s daughter was there – but she was our case study. For the purposes of this blog, let’s call her Ms Millennial. She’s confident, connected, seeking purpose and knowledge and she’s part of a generation, Frogley believes, is charged with the desire to be the ones to make the world a better place.

So much of how Millennials learn is linked to purpose, and their purpose is linked to their sense of community, altruism and commitment to change. Here’s what we learned.

Meet the Millennial

Frogley’s daughter was born in 1994:

• Her family had their first home PC when she was four, and Dogpile was the search engine they used.
• When she was 12, she had a MySpace account and a flip phone.
• At 15, she got her first laptop.
• At 17, she got her first MacBook. Today, she has an iPad and a MacBook Air.
• She now has an iPhone 6, but her Mum says that if she wants an iPhone 7 she’ll need to afford it herself.
• Now living out of home, Frogley’s daughter doesn’t own a TV – she watches everything online and reads online.
• She sends and receives messages from friends every day, any time of the day.
• She is confident, connected and in a hurry.
• She feels there is no such thing as too much communication or information, the more the better.
• She and those of her tribe prefer YouTube as their channel of choice – if they don’t know how to do something, they search YouTube. They learn through YouTube because the content is real, relatable, easy to find and on demand.

She is not unique. She is a member of the first generation of digital natives.

Frogley pointed out that of the work benefits that Millennials value the most (from a choice of flexibility, bonuses, learning and development, and a company car) – learning and development topped the list.

The reason why is interesting, and translates equally to purpose, meaning and community connection: the GFC.

According to Frogley, this is a generation of people who have watched the big institutions topple. Millennials are watching governments struggle to make ends meet, they have seen the economy crash and jobs become scarce just as they entered the workforce. Skill and will is seen as the driver of success, and the ability to adapt to change – quickly.

Millennials have also been the generation who has risen alongside uber successes like Mark Zuckerberg, they are disruptive because they can see the success of the disruptors and they respect it, they have seen social enterprise come into play, they know that if the establishment can’t provide the opportunities they’ll get on and make the opportunity for themselves.

However, if they are working within an organisation, what motivates them is autonomy and choice. They are self-driven – and want to be.

Understanding the Attitude Gap

As Frogley presented, she was running polls to engage her audience in the post-lunch slump (it worked). Funny enough, Millennials constituted 39 per cent of the audience, with Gen Xers dominating at 53 per cent. Baby Boomers were there, but what got a laugh with the crowd is that they couldn’t quite complete the poll in the time.

Baby Boomers currently hold the most senior jobs, closely followed by Gen Xers, and the attitude changes across the generations in terms of motivators, work practices, beliefs, world view and technology are vastly different – and yet Millennials are the ones driving the regeneration of workplace practices. By 2025 they will be 75 per cent of the workforce.

Purpose Drives

Frogley reported that 84 per cent of Millennials want purposeful work, and that is driven by a deep sense of social and environmental responsibility.

• 30 per cent plan to increase the amount of goods and services they will procure from socially responsible companies.
• 53 per cent of Millennial internet shoppers are more likely to purchase brands with a social purpose.
• Millennials demand transparency, communication and information, and they demand honesty and authenticity.

“They want to know how companies are connecting to the community and how they compare to other companies,” Frogley said.

What this means in the world of giving? Our interpretation of this is that it’s not just a ‘nice to have’ for Millennials to have ways to participate in giving, community engagement, corporate responsibility and broader sustainability and development agendas. It’s expected, and if it isn’t there they’ll seek it out and bring it to their organisations somehow.

Good2Give was represented at the Summit by one of our Millennial Givers in Residence: Emma Lang. We asked Emma what’s important to her in the workplace…here’s what she had to say:

• Connection with people.
• Being included in the strategic – not necessarily developing it, but understanding how the broader vision translates to strategic objectives and then team and individual goals.
• Change and adaptability – the rate of pace for our career paths changing with the technology, innovation and external forces affecting our organisations and our chosen professions never, ever stops – and we need to learn quickly and constantly to keep up. We also like variety.