Running head: LOYALTY OF MILLENNIALS: WHAT IS DIFFERENT 1

Loyalty of Millennials:

What is different and what should be done to achieve it

Diego T. Neto

Manhattan College
 LOYALTY OF MILLENNIALS: WHAT IS DIFFERENT 2

Abstract

This paper presents, according to Delloite (2018), some conclusions about Millennials loyalty toward

organizations and the major motives that justifies the current situation. Understanding the Millennials’

profile and what generated it, presented by Lancaster, L. C., & Stillman, D. (2011), this research arrange

this profile through Maslow`s hierarchy of needs, presented by Aanstoos, C. M. (2018), in order to help

organizations and leaders to understand what are necessities this generation have. This paper also

presents how, according to Robinson, K. (2012), the environment where Millennials grew up where not

able to attend nor make themselves aware which those necessities are. The conclusion presents what

approach should be taken on Millennials by organizations and their leaders in order to make them care

about the company’s goals and generate return over the time and money invested in their

development.

Keywords: Millennials, Leadership, Loyalty

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Loyalty of Millennials:

What is different and what should be done to achieve it

According to Delloite (2018), the loyalty levels of workers from younger generations such as

Millennials and Gen Z have retreated to where they were in 2016. Nowadays over four in 10 Millennials

(43 percent) envision leaving their jobs within two years and only 28 percent seek to stay beyond five

years. Employed Gen Z expressed even less loyalty, with 61 percent saying they would leave within two

years if given the choice. Delloite (2018) concluded Millennials and Gen Z need positive reasons to stay

loyal with their employers. As reported, both generations need to be offered realistic prospect that by

staying loyal they will, in the long run, be materially better off – and as individuals, develop faster and

more fully than if they left.

Among those Millennials who would willingly leave their employers within the next two years,

62 percent regard the gig economy as a viable alternative to full-time employment and what it makes

the gig-based work so attractive is the promise of (or need for) a higher income, but flexibility and

freedom are important secondary considerations.

According to Lancaster, L. C., & Stillman, D. (2011) Millennials were raised by people, mostly

Baby Boomers, that were not able to achieve their own dreams. That frustration drove their attitude

toward their children to encourage them finding their own passion. In a way to help their children to be

happy, their parents gave them all the choices they did not have as when they were kids. Given the

context of each family, Millennials did not have their options limited by financial restraint. During their

first fifteen or twenty years of life, they did not have to be concerned about money or lack of choices

because of that. Their parents were in charge of that and also sacrificed themselves to give all the

opportunities their kids could have.

In other words, Millennials were raised not worrying about money, thus to be attracted to a way

of working because of the higher income does not make sense. But according to Johansson, A. (2017,
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Sep 28) Millennials are also struggling with lower income compared to Baby Boomers when they were

the same age. They were raised in a world where their parents and teachers taught that college degrees

were necessary to get better jobs and live a better life. That requirement made them take over student

loans which they are not able to pay nowadays. According to Robinson, K. (2012) we are living in a

society where professionals who carry a college degree in their resume became abundant. Companies

are not willing to pay high salaries just because one has a degree, like they did when the Baby Boomers

entered the workforce. Given that, even that Millennials were raised to not concern about money, the

change of scenario from the one that made their parents and teachers formulate the importance of a

college degree to the one where this college degree lost its importance and that some time in life a

person must be responsible for yourself and your spending justifies the concern of this generation about

their income.

The following subjects that motivate Millennials toward the gig economy are flexibility and

freedom that this kind of job gives. It is needed to dig deeper to understand what made these topics

valued by Millennials in order to jeopardize their loyalty toward their employers.

Discussion

According to Lancaster, L. C., & Stillman, D. (2011) Millennials can be defined through seven

trends.

1. Home Education: Millennials are composed by protected children seen as the best creations of their

parents. As their members enter college and work, their parents, instead of cutting the umbilical

cord, buy an extension. That allows them to be asked for instructions by their children on what they

could do if they were in that position in case of a difficult assignment or responsibility.

2. Entitlement: The members of this generation grew up during the movement to value their self-

esteem, hearing about them a lot of praise from their parents and teachers. This produced

teenagers who think they can achieve everything they want in life and someone who will demand
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his rights just because they endeavored through their assignments. So, they see themselves as

deserving of special treatment as soon as when they enter the workplace.

3. Purpose: the dream is no longer being "having a job" and became "having a job that means

something". Millennials were raised by generations with a different understanding of purpose,

which they were not able to achieve. That environment created the motto “Since you are going to

work hard on your life, find a work that is meaningful to you.”. Millennials want to have a good life

thanks to a job that has meaning and contributes to the company, the country, a cause or a

community.

4. Big Expectations: Millennials begins to work with great expectations of accomplishment and success.

Unfortunately, the work experience is not always what they expected, and their members change

jobs in search of one that has more to do with them.

5. Need for Dynamism: This is a generation that barely knows the world without a personal computer.

Most had access to information, fun or talked to other people with a click since childhood. Through

most part of their life, they had not to wait for much time to get what they wanted. The

consequence is a generation that is not willing to wait in order to achieve their goals.

6. Social Network: Having access to information at the speed of light taught Millennials to

communicate in other ways. They publish, chat, create links, and use instant communicators like

Facetime, Whatsapp and Facebook to fervently debate politics, religion, pop culture, and life with

people they've never met before. These people are part of the powerful networks which they live

their lives with.

7. Collaboration: At school and at home Millennials were encouraged to argue. It should not be

surprising to their leaders that they came to work eager to have a voice. Giving orders went out of

style; in their place, there were frank conversations and negotiations in which the two parties yield.
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Another way of understanding Millennials necessities is to look that seven trends through

Maslow hierarchy of human needs presented by Aanstoos, C. M. (2018).

Their physiological needs were attended when their parents provided all the food, water, and

shelter they were able to, which was not available during their childhood. The Baby Boomers grew up in

big families where their mother should not work in order to take care of the children. Even though they

could have a shelter where they could live and sleep, their access to food was limited because the

income from their father was not enough to feed all their family. They had to share with several

brothers whatever their father could afford and put on the table. That situation generated parents

focused on giving their children all the support they did not have before.

Their security needs were attended when they did not have to worry about that subject

because, according to Lancaster, L. C., & Stillman, D. (2011), their parents were always following them

through their cellphones to keep tracking where they were and with who would get them back home.

Baby Boomers were the ones that fought for their civil rights in the 1960s and Generation X watched it

through television or their windows. Both generations understand what it is to leave form their houses

in the morning and not be able to return safely. Even though according to Delloite (2018), 32 percent of

Millennials in developed markets are preoccupied with terrorism and 30 percent in emerging markets

are concerned about crime / personal safety, the current scenario cannot be compared with the State

institutions such as the police or the army forces acting absent or intentionally contributing to the sense

of insecurity. In order words, although Millennials are currently concerned about security, disregarding

specific regional situations in the Middle East and Western Europe, the environment where they were

raised had not provided the feeling that their lives were at constant risk just by going to school. If the

opposite happened, their parents were the first ones open to sacrifice themselves and move the family

to another neighborhood, city or country.

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Their social needs were attended when, according to Lancaster, L. C., & Stillman, D. (2011),

Millennials had access to the internet in the 1990s and they were able to talk with their friends through

instant communicators like ICQ and MSN Messenger and also they could meet new people from all over

the world through mIRC and chat rooms all over the internet. The discussion forums were excellent

places where they could not only talk about a subject that they were passionate about, but also meet

new people that were just heartfelt as they were or maybe even more while Baby boomers and

Generation X first social groups were their friends from school and practices. Being able to access the

internet since their childhood made this generation lose the concept that they had to be in front of a

person to talk to them. As a matter of fact, they did not lose this concept. For them, the necessity of

being physically present to meet and talk to someone never existed. Today, through the touch of a

finger they can talk to someone that attended kindergarten with them, but on the other side of the

world.

Following the Entitlement description presented above, the esteem necessity were attended not

only when they were praised by their parents and teachers, but also when, as presented by Lancaster, L.

C., & Stillman, D. (2011), their parents Baby Boomers asked for their help on how to operate their

cellphone or install a software on their home computer just because they were good at it. Instead of

command their students with an iron hand, their coaches and teachers encouraged this generation to

collaborate with them and each other in order to achieve the appropriate balance of activities.

Millennials had responsibility and autonomy, and, at the same time, they learned and played essential

roles as team members. They grew up knowing, from their perspective, they were able to deliver results

and thinking they have the potential to do more they can do now. Esteem probably is the least of their

necessities.

The last necessity is the self-actualization, which, according to Aanstoos, C. M. (2018), Maslow

defined as an ongoing tendency toward actualizing potentials, capacities, and talents of a person`s own
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intrinsic nature. According to Herrmann, N. & Herrmann-Nehdi, A. (2015) our own intrinsic nature can

be described as our thinking preferences and this affects our behaviors, interests, decision-making

process, communication style, and all other aspects of performance. As stated by Herrmann, N. &

Herrmann-Nehdi, A. (2015), our thinking preferences are determined by our nature and nurture. The

nervous connections inside our brain define our thinking preference and those connections are

determined by the nature of our DNA in our inherited genes and chromosomes, but they are also

influenced by the nurture of our life’s circumstances while we grow up reinforcing some thinking

preferences and weakening others according to the rewards or feelings we acquire about it. The

experiences we live along our lives are influenced by the environment around us. Therefore, the

building of our thinking preferences, in other words, our own intrinsic nature depends on the places

where we live those experiences and on the people that are with us along those moments. The country

where we live, the parents that raise us, the school we attend to, the teachers we had, the friends we

make at school, the condition to which the society is while we grew up and many other agents influence

on the engineering of our own intrinsic nature. Each person will have their own set of parameters that

will define their concept of self-actualization and Millennials are not excepted from that.

According to Lancaster, L. C., & Stillman, D. (2011) Millennials is the generation that started

working in the organizations with the most graduations that we know. That statement agrees with

Robinson, K. (2012) when he presents that in the 1970s one in every twenty people from countries with

developed markets went to college and the current proportion is one in three, scaling to one in two

people with a university degree. If we consider that, according to Lancaster, L. C., & Stillman, D. (2011),

they had different responsibilities at home like helping their parents planning the family vacation or

introducing them to new technologies and also that, while at school, they had to delegate and combine

activities based on their own expertise when their teachers established they need to work in groups, we
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may state that Millennials had the most graduations and team experience compared to Generation X

and Baby Boomers when they both started their careers.

Given that Millennials had four over five of their motivations as humans beings attended by the

environment where they grow and that they entered the job market with more experience and

knowledge than the previous generations before them, it may be correct to declare that they used that

experience and knowledge to understand what is their own intrinsic nature which configures their self-

actualization necessity.

This hypothesis can be ruled out considering that, according to Robinson, K. (2012), the

academic systems prepare and evaluate their students through a process focused on linearity,

submission, and standardization where they present their scholars information about what happened

before them or even different methodologies that were developed until now. The major learning and

development structure utilized by all the generations, Millennials or not, is based on presenting the facts

that happened before them and the instructions that were or are being developed until the moment

they are students. There is no focus on helping the students to understand, on the individual level, what

are their interests, what are their natural behaviors, how is their own decision-making process, what are

their intrinsic motivations that need to be attended in order to make themselves whole as a person. In

other words, the mass-orientation approach used by the educational system does not focus on helping

their clients, disregard the generations, understand their own intrinsic nature.

According to Dubrin, A. J. (2016), emotional intelligence refers to the ability to do such things as

understanding one’s feelings, have empathy for others, and regulate one’s emotions to enhance one’s

quality of life and there are four key factors used to describe it.

1. Self-awareness: the ability to understand your own emotions.

2. Self-management: the ability to control one’s emotions and act with honesty and integrity in a

consistent and adaptable manner.

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3. Social awareness: the ability to have empathy of others and intuition about the problems on the

social groups one belongs.

4. Relationship management: the ability to present interpersonal skills of being able to communicate

clearly and convincingly, disarm conflicts, and build strong personal bonds.

Any person is open to develop their own emotional intelligence ordering the factors above

through any way that better suits them, but the optimal way is to first focus on developing your self-

awareness, that will give you the based need to develop the self-management factor. With the self

factors managed, a person will have the structure to start developing his or her social awareness among

the social groups he or she belongs in order to manage them through relationship management.

In order to understand your own emotions, to start developing your self-awareness, a person

should realize what triggers those emotions. What makes one sad, what makes one angry, what makes

one happy, and all the other emotions. Looking through the happiness perspective, a person has to

perceive what needs to be achieved, by them or delivered by the environment where they are, in order

to feel fulfilled. In other words, you have to understand what are your innate decision-making processes

that need to happen, you have to understand what are your natural behaviors that are essential for you

to perform so you can feel yourself, you have to understand what are your intrinsic interests, your

motivations, that makes you go through challenging situations excelling yourself. Summing up,

everyone that are eager to attend their self-actualization necessity, like Millennials are, need to start

developing their self-awareness and the first step to achieve that is to understand which personal

necessities need to be achieved to make that happen.

Many leaders may defend that each person should be responsible for themselves if they are

eager to understand their own concept of self-actualization and that is not wrong. But, according to

Lancaster, L. C., & Stillman, D. (2011), Millennials grow up having every choice they could have access to.

If something displeased them, they could just move on because they had another toy, they could watch
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a different cartoon on YouTube, they could talk to someone else through their smartphones or even

they could just quit their summer job because their parents would pay for their bills because they

wanted their kids focused on their studies. Millennials never had to understand what their motivations

are because they could just move to another option better suited for them. Even if they were not aware

of what made that choice motivational appropriate.

Outlining the concept of loyalty for younger generations, unlike the Baby Boomers that

understood a successful career as working through the organizational ranks for decades in only one

company and Generation X that were always prepared to make a move in any sign of disturbance

because they believe the enterprises would not think twice about mass dismissal in order to cut costs,

Millennials are only loyal their own happiness when they think about their career. For them, it does not

make sense to work in a company where they could have a successful career or even fight for a higher

position if they are not feeling happy at that moment or if it is clear that that position will not make

themselves happier. Even if they are not aware to materialize in words what are their own motivations

that need to be achieved by them or delivered by the environment.

Conclusions

There are many solutions proposed on how to motivate Millennials and keep them loyal to

corporations such as telecommuting, free time to develop their own interests, allowing them to

personalize their own space, giving them video games to play on the intervals or even installing a slide at

the main lobby, but there will be always another company doing that better than the other. That

strategy will make the companies spend time and money changing the organizational cultures, but will

not make the Millennials attend their necessity of self-actualization.

The sustainable way to make Millennials loyal to their companies is to provide them leaders who

see them as individuals, with their own unique set of necessities and talents and are also able to help

them understand what these natural talents, these natural behaviors are. Millennials need leaders who
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are able to help them understand their own motivations, their unique set of parameters that will define

their own concept of self-actualization.

There are several standardized tools and process that may help the younger generations to be

aware of their own natural behaviors such as assessments and feedbacks, but they are, as a generation,

too fast and too pressured by society and themselves to be as happy and successful as the expectations

that were drawn when they were kids. Millennials needs leaders, not a fun organizational culture nor a

cool human resources divisions, who will make them stop from time to time to understand which of

their motivations are being attended through their current assignments, someone who makes them

understand which tasks will nurse those motivations and also someone who makes them understand

how their natural behaviors could be used to generate results. With this information at their hands,

Millennials will need leaders who are also able to let them go to achieve that concept of self-

actualization designed by them, Millennials and leaders, because that goal may be accomplished in a

higher level, generating more results, in another team inside the same organization.

Recapping, in order to make Millennials loyal to the organizations, they need leaders who see

them as individuals with their own personal traits and someone who will help them achieve a higher

level of self-awareness through the understanding of which are these personal traits and how they can

be used to produce results. Through that approach, Millennials will be able to attend their self-

actualization necessity and they will be loyal to everyone who provides the environment which it can be

achieved.
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