Millennials will make up
50% of the workforce by 2020
Banks that we interviewed told us that while there will still be a
push to keep workplace costs low, there will also be a need to
provide a variety of workplace settings to meet the demands
of the different generations in terms of work-life balance and
what they expect in the workplace. This will involve significant
redistribution of space, with a subsequent reduced space need
through planning and occupational efficiencies.
The future of the financial workplace is being reshaped as
much by the rapidly changing expectations of the worker
as by the economic climate. The workplace of tomorrow
must be designed around these ever more empowered and
informed workers, and companies who wish to attract and
retain the best talent will ignore this change at their peril.
3.5.2. Millennials
Millennials – those born between 1980 and 2000 – are set
to be the driving force behind workplace culture change,
as they will make up 50% of the workforce by 2020, and
an increasing percentage of management and leadership
roles too. The Millennials are the first generation with more
knowledge of the technological tools used at work than the
generation preceding them, creating in effect a ‘reverse
knowledge-gradient’.
Millennials are individualistic and tech-savvy, and require
constant feedback, career variety and flexible and mobile
workplaces. Their experience of the global financial crisis has
fostered in them a much greater concern for their own needs
than those of their organisation, and they expect to progress
quickly in their careers. These expectations mean that all
organisations will have to compete far harder for talent, but
as many banks still have a very traditional workplace and
work model, it will be a greater shift for them than for much
of their competition.
34
The future of the financial workplace
|
September 2014
