By Matt Hoffman
CCC conducted a frontline staff skills survey as part of our major research initiative for this year. As you can imagine, not every interesting data point makes its way into the final product. Here’s a look at what was left on the “cutting room floor” in our second of three posts in this series (view post one).
When speaking with members about our new study “The Next Frontier of Rep Performance,” one question came up again and again: “What does the rise of the Millennials mean for how we think about rep performance?”
The Millennials, the generation of people born between 1980 and 2000, are the newest, youngest employees in service organizations. While Millennials are generally given credit for being tech-savvy, they are also typically portrayed as entitled, self-centered brats. Consider some of these descriptions of Millennials from a 60 Minutes profile:
- “They grew up laden with trophies just for participating.”
- “This generation only takes yes for an answer”
- “Narcissistic praise hounds are taking over your office!”
Ouch.
The members that we spoke to about rep performance wondered what they needed to do to get the best performance out of this new generation. If the stereotypes are true, then service organizations would need to reexamine how they hire, develop, and manage their frontline reps.
Fortunately, a complete overhaul of management does not appear to be necessary. When we looked at the data from our Frontline Staff Skills survey about rep performance, Millennials look almost exactly like every other age group. Millennials’ emotional intelligence, communication skills, problem solving skills, and overall performance are statistically indistinguishable from those of their peers. Millennials may be more likely to have tattoos and body piercings, but they aren’t different when it comes to the fundamentals of being a frontline rep.
One exception stood out, though: Millennials are 10% more likely than their peers to be described as someone who is “extremely motivated to achieve well-defined goals” and “cares about winning.” This finding does not fit with the prevailing stereotypes about Millennials. Why would a generation that was laden with trophies just for participating care more about winning than anyone else?
One thought is that the technology that Millennials grew up with caused them to become highly competitive. Whereas previous generations could only compete with people in their local neighborhoods, Millennials could complete with anyone in the entire world. For example…
…Gen Xers competed to be the Homecoming King/Queen of their individual school, while Millennials competed to have the most Facebook friends of anyone in their entire social network.
…Gen Xers tried to get the high score on a game at their local arcade, while Millennials tried to get the high score on the entire Xbox Live network.
It may be true that Millennials need to be managed a bit differently than prior generations. However, our data suggests that service organizations need not fear the rise of the “narcissistic praise hounds,” as Millennials are just as skilled and perform just as well as their peers. There is even an upside to Millennials: if you give them a well-defined goal, they will be very motivated to achieve it.
How do you think Millennials in service organizations differ from their peers?
Related posts:
on April 27, 2011
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From my experience and observation, I believe that Millenials in service organizations differ from their peers by generally being more well-informed across a wide range of issues, while generations that preceded them generally tend to have specialized knowledge in one field.
When I ask a Silent Generation, Baby Boomer, or Gen X – er about something to which they have no clue, they say “I don’t know” and don’t usually try to figure it out. Sometimes they make a joke or opine. When I ask a Millennial, even when it’s not on a subject they’re familiar, I often get an incredibly concise, informed response.
on April 28, 2011
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I agree with Glenn’s observations here regarding the value the Millenials bring. Some of the struggles are their desire to move more quickly up to higher level roles before they either have the experience or the maturity. They tend to get very dissapointed regarding the time in role issue and pay stagnation.
on June 15, 2011
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[...] Comment Email Print This Post TweetCCC conducted a frontline staff skills survey as part of our major research initiative for this year. As you can imagine, not every interesting data point makes its way into the final product. Here’s a look at what was left on the “cutting room floor” in our third of three posts in this series (view posts one and two). [...]