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Millennials in the Workplace.

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Submitted By magthelean
Words 3185
Pages 13
Topic: Millennials at work: Should they be managed differently? Why?

1. Introduction
In this day and age where change is a constant and where humans are considered the most valuable resource (Lepak and Snell, 1998), Human Resource Management is essential and vital to an organisation’s survival (Boxall and Purcell, 2000). This essay attempts to discuss on the reasons why Millennials should be managed differently as compared to Baby Boomers and some of the issues that organisations face in their efforts to effectively combine this generation into the existing workforce.
The overall structure of the essay will follow in such an order where by it will start with the brief overall definition of Millennials and Baby Boomers for a clearer picture, followed by mentioning some of the defining characteristics of how Millennials behave in workplaces and the implications of it for Human Resource Managers. Lastly, this essay will conclude by reinforcing the stand that Millennials should be managed differently with the main points of argument highlighted as well as the future directions that HR managers can look to.
1.1. Millennials versus Baby Boomers
To understand the significance of Millennials in the workplace, it is important to first define Millennials and its characteristics. The term ‘Millennials’ or more commonly known as Generation Y, is defined as any individual born after 1981 (Leyden et al., 2007). Other terms which refer to the same cohort include, Nexters, Echo Boomers, Baby Boomblet, Generation Why, and the Digital Generation (Belkin, 2007)(Chester, 2001)(Martin and Tulgan, 2006)(McDonnell, 2006). On the other hand, a Baby Boomer is defined as any individual “born between 1946 and 1964” (Kupperschmidt, 2000). To borrow the explanation for the term Baby Boomers, Kupperschmidt stated that, the “generation is referred to as baby boomers because of the

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