Big companies are paying up to $20,000 an hour to intergenerational consultants who advise employers how to deal with Millennials. The need for the experts was felt when people born in the 1980s started to enter the workforce at the turn of the millennium and employers noticed that their new, young workers have a different attitude and outlook.
Rise of intergenerational consulting
As more people born in the 1980s and 1990s joined the workforce, they eventually became the majority that companies realized it must understand better their millennial employees.
This development led to the rise of intergeneration consulting, Fortune reported.
For $20,000 an hour, the experts on millennials teach executive and managers of large companies such as Oracle, Coca Cola and Goldman Sachs effective communication techniques with their millennial workers as well as how to retain them as engaged and happy employees. The cost of these consultancy services was between $60 million and $70 million in 2016, according to data from Source Global Research, a consulting market tracker.
Disconnection between youth and what companies think young workers want
Linda Pollak, a 41-year-old expert on the millennial group, said she serves as a bridge between the two generations. She explained there is a disconnect between young people, their goals, expectations and hopes, and what companies, run by members of the Baby Boomer generation and Generation X, think what their millennial employees want.
Many millennials are often mislabeled in the workplace for being “entitled” and “”self-obsessed” on the assumption that technology had spoiled them. Their older co-workers have assumed they are lazy, but in reality, many of the members of the Millennial Generation are more likely to work after office hours to finish the task given them.
Rise in cosmetic surgeries
It is not just intergenerational consulting that was boosted when the millennial generation joined the workforce. Together with Baby Boomers, the two generations boosted the business of cosmetic surgeons.
Experts attribute it to the selfie trend and social media influence as reality stars like the Kardashian sisters move young women to go for medical procedures such as lip filling, breast and butt enhancement and even Botox injections at such as young age because the reality stars the millennials watch on their smartphones undergo those procedures regularly.
The selfie-taking habit, of course, is part of their office life.
Despite the differences between the generations, Shashank Chavan, manager of Oracle, shared that making millennial employees happy and more productive is not that challenging. Like the generation before them, the workers born in the 1980s and 1990s enjoy food, movie outings and team-building activities that cost a little for large enterprises that could afford to pay intergenerational consultants $20,000 an hour.
