Tristan Marshall

11/05/2015
EWRT 1A
Ruth Trimble

I.

Millenials Attitudes to Work

1. Heightened Technology is the cause of Millenials attitudes
2. These new attitudes as the cause of the new culture of work
3. The new work culture as the cause of a shift in the old HR model
Thesis: The technological revolution has created a cultural revolution, which, in turn,
has fostered a new culture in the workplace.
II.
A. Technology provides unprecedented information and convenience resulting in
a more knowledgeable and possibly lazier generation.
B. A more informed generation has resulted in one that insists upon transparency
and integrity as well as more involvement in the structure of the workplace.
C. Because Millenials are more confident, well informed, and open to convenient
innovations older workers feel hostile towards them.
III.

The digital revolution has created a more informed generation and therefore more
aware. This new awareness has spurred a change in the workplace from the days of their parents
and grand parents. Employers will be forced to keep pace with this shift in values if they are to
succeed into the future.

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Children of the Apple

On a particular day when my wife and I were a little younger and renting our
second apartment we were standing in the living room having a conversation with the
owners. They were in their sixties, and they were telling us about how their whole
generation had made the mistake of trying to give their kids everything they wanted.
Afterwards, as if through the looking glass, they felt that despite their best intentions
their childrens values were a bit backwards compared to their own. Fast-forward to a
more recent conversation with 27-year-old dental hygienist Linh Than about the
attitudes of Millenials, her generation, towards work. She generally believes in the
causal relationship between the parents of the last generation and the actions of their
children in the next but she thinks rapidly evolving technology is the most influential role
player in cultivating the minds of young workers in the Millennial generation. This could
be understood as just another case in point for the shift in views and values between

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generations but Linhs position echoes authors like Don Tapscott who also believes that,
Although [Millennials] ways of thinking and working may make them harder to
manage they have promise (Wright 107). The effects of the digital revolution truly
seem to have opened a wide gap between these demographic cohorts, and while older
generations may not agree, Millenials may be spurring a revolution of their own in the
workplace.

Best-selling author Don Tapscott believes that technology and especially the
Internet have had the biggest influence on the current generation of young adults. In an
interview with Aliah D. Wright he submits that Millennials, whom he dubs the "Net
Generation" and calls "the smartest generation ever", will have a sort of revolutionary
effect on the business world, holding companies to a higher standard and forcing them
to overhaul the more tradition HR model (Wright 107). Linh also believes that technology
plays a major role for Millennials and their "re shaping" of the workplace, although her
position is a bit more tempered and less optimistic about the results:

Technology has created many opportunities to make a better

world. It helps us get things done. It helps us stay connected.
And it allows us to learn and be informed in such a way that

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is unprecedented in history. We have the entire wealth of

human knowledge at our fingertips. It's no wonder we know
more about the world than our parents and grandparents did
at this age. (Than)

But there is something else that Linh sites technology as having created lot of:
convenience. It is true that technology has taken us from a button press to a
touchscreen finger swipe in less than 20 years, and the days of having to go out and
buy music or a movie are long gone. About the dark side of growing up in the Age of
Apple Linh states unequivocally, "technology makes us lazy" (Than). She sees the
comfort and convenience technology provides in stark contrast to the "old days" of
analog and believes that, in effect, "it is inevitable for us to posses character traits that
result from growing up in a world of convenience" (Than).

With technology creating a cultural revolution of its own it is inevitable that the
effects will go far to redefine the workplace. Growing up with so much easily accessible
information "at our fingertips" has resulted in a generation that wants to be "in the know"
about everything including the company they work for. The openness and freedom with
which digital technology has allowed us to view the world has forged a generation that

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demands transparency and "insists on integrity" in the workplace (Wright 107). Not only
that, but today's young workers want to be a part of something. They're not as interested
in working on an assembly line or being boxed in a cubicle as a nameless, faceless cog
in the machine. Linh says:

These days young workers are more creative and innovative.

We want to know what the company stands for, and we want
to be constituents going forward. We don't want to be clock
punchers or wage slaves. We want to be stimulated. We
don't want our home life and work life to be so completely
separated as our parents did, and we don't want to be kept in
the dark. We want to be kept in the loop. (Than)

These are but some of the factors that both Tapscott and Than believe should
make us "enormously hopeful" about Net Geners in the future, but there is much
resistance from employers of the present whom, ironically, tend to take the approach
typical of older generation parents towards their children's newfangled values:
punishment and restriction (Wright 107). Tapscott believes these traditional but outdated
employer practices will be unsuccessful and eventually abandoned in favor of a more

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integrated and progressive HR model. Than agrees. Theres no way to restrict social
networking at work. No one needs a company computer to go online anymore when
everyone has a iPhone in their pocket (Than). She predicts that, much as the recent PR
problems that have slowly devastated companies like McDonalds and Wal-Mart, stale
employee relations will began to eat away at the bottom lines of other companies that
refuse to change (Than). There is also the hostility towards younger workers for their
high confidence and reliance on technological convenience, which is misconstrued by
older workers as arrogance, laziness, and a sense of entitlement (Wright 107). At 27,
Linh sees these sentiments as less of a serious hindrance and more of a natural
relationship between people of different generations:

It's just the same old story between older adults and younger
adults. Most people believe their generation 'did it right' and
if the next generation doesn't do it the same way then it is
somehow wrong. My parents grew up in a time when you
didn't ask questions about who you worked for. You went in
on time, did exactly what you were told, and went home
happy to even have a job. They didn't know much about the
people they worked for, the foods they ate, or the people that

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governed them. I think its a little bit of confusion/dissolution

at how much things have changed in such a small time
period... I also think its a little bit of jealousy. (Than)

Linh may be right. While many in older generations were expected to work long
boring hours with strict rules and nothing to break the monotony but the clock on the
wall, Millennials have much more freedom to choose how they work and to influence the
work they do. The shift to a climate of transparency is not only restricted to the political
sector but is also spreading to the business sector, and many companies are being
forced to reevaluate and reform in the light of public scrutiny. The world wide web of
connections has created a bigger interest in collaboration and creativity at work. That
means young adults want to be more a part of the companies they work for than ever
before but they also want to be seen as specific individuals opposed to voiceless clock
punchers. An interview for a job feels more like entering into a mutually beneficial
relationship with both sides attempting to look attractive to the other. "When I go to an
interview, I am evaluating the company just as much, if not more, than they are me. I
wouldn't want to give my time and energy for something I don't agree with," Linh says.
Whether you agree with her philosophy or not, it is clear that Millenials see a much

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different version of the American Dream to which they are entitled than anything their
grandparents could have imagined.

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Works Cited
Wright, Aliah. D. Millennials: Bathed in Bits. HRMagazine 55.7 (2010): 40-41. Print.
Reprinted in: EWRT 1A Composition and Reading. Fall 2015. By Ed. Ruth
Trimble. San Diego: University Readers, 2015. [107-108]. Print.

Than, Linh. Dental Hygienist. Aesthetic Dental Care, San Jose, CA. Interview. 2 Nov.
2015.