With millennial employees now ascendant in workplaces across the land, managers are grappling with how to hire, retain and engage them. In our continuing series “Hey Millennial!” Anna Fitzpatrick answers our burning questions about how to approach this exotic species of office fauna.
We hear millennials crave snacks and beer carts even more than a raise. Is that true?
This question is like trying to pick between having a dog that can do coffee runs and being best friends with Rihanna: a fun game that has little bearing on reality. Like many post-recession pros, I rotate through freelance and contract gigs to earn dough, which made me give serious side-eye to a recent Glassdoor study finding that 89% of 18- to 34-year-olds would prefer more perks to a pay raise.
I brought this up with Lauren Friese, a consultant and the founder of youth job site TalentEgg, who says the “money doesn’t matter” stereotype comes from anxiety about finding steady work: “In an interview, you’re not going to say, ‘Well, you pay a lot, and that is what’s most important to me.’” As with others before us, we millennials want a comfortable, living wage—something even killer office snacks can’t replace.
MORE ABOUT MILLENNIALS, JOBS & PERKS:
- Surprise: Millennials hate online job applications
- How Leon’s Furniture is reinventing itself for generation Instagram
- Uptalk and vocal fry are, like, totes profesh now, so get over it?
- How millennials are forcing financial firms to rethink retirement
- The perks and benefits that employees want more than a raise
- Why millennials shun sales careers, and what to do about it
- Millennials are forcing Canadian firms to up their mobile game
- Millennials are now the biggest generation in the Canadian workforce
- Millennials really aren’t different from previous generations of workers
