How Millennials are Changing the Corporate World.

If you had your first cell phone when you were about 17 and it was huge; if you used to hang out with a walk-man and make your own mixes by recording tracks from the radio onto cassettes; if there were no computers in your school and the World Wide Web was just starting to make its way into people’s life when you were about 16, then we have something in common. We are a cuspid Generation X — Millennials, which is an uncomfortable and confusing limbo, like something half analog and half digital.

We, the limbo generation, who were still teenagers in 2000, were raised by TV, which wanted us enslaved to the idea of a prosperous capitalistic society. Now that has proven to be nothing else than a fabricated lie. In fact, we literally saw the promises of bright future disintegrate before our eyes. Even though, like me, you were one of the anti-mainstream-fuck society rebels, and therefore you knew things would have turned to shit eventually, the post 9/11 world crisis hit harder than we could have imagined.

True Millennials, instead, were born within a system in crisis and have been raised by the Internet. These two facts gave them a crucial advantage compared to half Millennials like me: they know and command the very codes that run the system. They are no longer against “The Machine”, they ARE the machine!

As such, they embody the specific traits of a (our) decadent society: they are narcissists, hedonists, fame and money oriented, self-entitled, tech-savvy, and pretty confident about what they want, who they are or want to become.

But there’s a thread that connects Generation Xers and Millennials: they both got screwed by Baby Boomers and they’re both, in opposite ways, anti-corporate. Gen Xers do it by being outsiders, while Millennials are doing it from the inside, which is an utterly effective stand point if you want to change things.

This whole train of thoughts began with an article on The Independent that mentioned how the Australian branch of account firm Ernst & Young is offering its employees 6 to 12 weeks “life leave” policy: a period to travel, work part-time, or just take time off. Additionally, the company is implementing other initiatives to meet the needs of the new generation of work force: term-time working and temporary part-time. The article also reports EY Oceania’s People Partner Kate Hillman’s statement in this regard: “Flexible work policies like this are necessary because of increased competition for talent.”

This got me thinking: before people would compete to be able to work for a certain company. Today, thought this trend is not at all reversed, companies have started to compete to work with people, meaning to get the best “talent” out there to work for them.

Besides, more and more companies are increasing flexible work policies and setting up friendly, cool work environments. But why do businesses feel the need to do so?

In the case of Ernst & Young, the “life leave” is self-funded so what’s the big deal? It’s nothing new for employees to decide to take a year off. The difference is that normally, until now, this decision would entail losing your job. It was more like quitting to pursue other interests or experiences.

Now, instead, companies started offering this option to their employees and, even though self-funded, a policy like Ernst & Young’s “life leave” gives employees the opportunity to explore the world and experience a different lifestyle with the prospect of a secure job to return to.

With all the bragging that’s been going on about Millennials, it seems to me that this generation considers attaining a lifestyle that’s true to oneself as more important than building a career. So they are constantly looking for new experiences, so much so that the “experiential factor” has been changing the way entire industries, like travel and hospitality for example, fully operate. And now the corporate world too.

Millennials’ narcissism and self-entitlement made them self-confident to the point where they are not willing to compromise certain aspects of life in order to get a job. Particularly, their time to travel, to study and update skills, leisure time, time to dedicate to sport and friends, to cultivate their hobbies, to make new and inspiring experiences and to pursue independent professional ventures. On the same note, they demand laid-back and flexible work environments that allow them to be themselves and stay true to their identity, another major millennial priority.

Millennials are the new work force and they are flat-out dictating the rules. They are not protesting against the system and the corporate world’s injustices. On the contrary, they navigate it by editing its algorithm in their favor. They are aware that they are the system and thus they can change it, modulate it, use it and, ultimately, reverse it.

The result? Companies are competing for creative talents and offering catchy, flexible work policies to attract the most skilled, innovative professionals to come up with the next best idea or product in their sector.

What I find impressive is that it’s no longer people who are afraid of not finding or losing their job. Rather, companies are increasingly afraid of losing or not being picked by the talented millennial on the market.

Candidates are now picking companies and not vice-versa. And so companies change and innovate and update their CVs in order to meet Millennials’ demands and needs, such as pursuing their passions outside of work.

We can fairly argue that the replaceability and disposability of workers is reaching a turning point due to Millennials’ unapologetic certainty that they are, in fact, unique and non replaceable. Whether that’s true or not, that’s not the point here. What matters is that Millennials’ confidence is shifting the corporate world’s traditional power structures by making companies replaceable.

In the past decade, the image of the digital nomad who’s able to travel the world by working remotely from their laptop on a white sandy beach has become so popular it is now a cliche’. A life choice for many, this lifestyle is now available as a cool, temporary experience even for people who have no intention of being a “nomad”. And that’s because it’s something young professionals want to try out and companies are eager to offer this option in order to be chosen.

As the article reports, this is happening not only because it’s been proven that a flexible work environment increases employees’ engagement by 11%, but also, or maybe primarily, because Millennials employees prioritize flexibility when looking for a job.

Between the request for flexibility and more stimulating work experiences and the fact that Millennials will make almost the whole work force in the next few years, the corporate world seems to be left with no choice. Either companies adapt to Millennials’ demands or they won’t get those precious talents.

So how are millennials changing the corporate world? By owning, reclaiming and mastering the very same strategies against it.

It is through a straight-up blackmailing attitude — very much like the one that companies have been using towards their employees — that Millennials are reshaping the corporate world.