L&D 2020: Shaping change in learning

Society

Generational values

Several generations are coming together across the whole spectrum of employment. Many old Baby Boomers are still working, in spite of being past retirement age. Generation X are ‘old hands’, while Millennials (Gen Y born between 1982 and 2000) now make up a significant percentage of the working population.

By the turn of the century, many Baby Boomers had become dissatisfied with corporate life after having experienced serious downsizing. As a result, they often turned to employment alternatives such as small entrepreneurial businesses, social causes and contract working. Now ageing, many Boomers are keen to enjoy their retirement – and are releasing funds from the sale of their property to do so.

Features of Millennials:

• use technology to interact with services, government and work. They place an emphasis on choice and are anti-monopoly, which is encouraging constant innovation¹
• prove false the assumption that young adults are always more alienated and risk prone than the generation before. They want to correct for impractical Boomers and undisciplined Gen Xers²
• develop community norms based on rules, standards, and personal responsibility. Every arena is now more mannerly, structured and civic-minded. They are closer to parents than Boomers and Gen Xers were at the same age².

Pop culture is bland and mainstream. Young film stars display more modesty and bring new civic purpose to screen violence. As in the old Disney’s ‘High School Musical’, stories and songs are upbeat and team-orientated, but lack depth².

As digital natives, the lives of Millennials are highly inter-linked. They are constantly forming relationships with a select but changeable group of peers through social networking. In their web-based, information-rich world, multi-tasking is the norm. Postal services, except to receive goods ordered online, are dead to this generation. Email is the new snail mail – it takes far too long and excludes other people in the network.

In public cyberspace, Millennials use information to empower groups rather than individuals. They have developed new standards for social networking, identifying a clear range of acceptable online attitudes and behaviors. Virtual communities are constantly serving the needs of young adults, from finding jobs to buying houses. They depend on online communities similar to the old Craigslist and Freecycle to help them set up their lives after college².

Millenials value both self-reliance and cooperation. Self-reliance because individuals can no longer fall back on social-security, pensions, or other benefits and cooperation because they believe group action is often the best way to lobby or optimise the use of scarce resources³.

Now a political powerhouse, Millennials mass to support elders who translate spiritual resolve into public authority. They reject the negativism, moralism, and selfishness of the national politics they witnessed as children. They are liberal in wanting governments to aggressively protect the community, strengthen the middle class and reduce economic risk. They are also conservative in their life goals and respect for rules².

But social reforms have not always come fast enough in the developing world. Disappointed expectations continue to drive youth emigration to more developed countries – and underemployed young people into fringe political and religious movements. This is bringing new waves of terrorism and instability to the economies of target countries³.

1. http://www.pwc.co.uk/pdf/managing_tomorrows.pdf

2. Managing for the long term. Neil Howe and William Strauss, Harvard Business Review, July-August 2007

3. 53 Trends Now Shaping the Future, World Future Society (2005)

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