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With waves of baby boomer retirements looming, many people wonder whether “millennials” – a generation born roughly between 1982 and 2000 – will answer the call to public service.
Trey Grayson, director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard University, thinks they will. Speaking at the Sept. 15 Annual Meeting of the Massachusetts Municipal Personnel Association in Plymouth, Grayson discussed how local government can best use the technology skills of millennials and their passion to serve.
Millennials account for one third of the world’s population, Grayson pointed out, and one in four Americans are a member of this social media-driven generation, which decided the 2008 election and changed the way the world communicates.
The savvy technology skills of millennials and their eagerness to learn and ask questions like, “Why do we do that?” puts them at an advantage in the ever-changing digital age, he said.
Millennials also are very passionate about public service, although they perform it in many ways, including volunteering, donating to Locks of Love, and helping out a neighbor, for example.
“Young millennials will answer the call to public service,” Grayson said. “Its part of their DNA.”
With unemployment at an all-time high, it’s a tough time for everyone, including millennials. This is a prime opportunity to get them in an entry-level government position, since, according to Grayson, values motivate millennials more than money.
The old “mentor-mentee” standard, where young employees shadow older employees for years, should be thrown out the window, he said. Instead, the key to government and veteran workers benefiting from the talents of millennials is mentoring from the bottom up.
Ways that government employees can “mentor up” include letting younger workers introduce everyone to the benefits of social media like Facebook and Twitter. Millennials can also introduce other employees to Google Docs, Google chat, and government-related phone apps so employees can share documents and ideas more efficiently.
Partnering millennials with veteran employees on a project can be beneficial to all, Grayson said. Millennials can remind older colleagues not to be afraid of technology and trying new things, while the veteran employees bring their experience to a project.
Some workplace behaviors of millennials can be hard for older colleagues to accept, such as always being 15 minutes late, typing on laptops or phones during meetings, and wearing headphones during the workday. But these actions should not be mistaken as signs of disrespect, Grayson said. There’s a good chance, he said, that millennials will stay an extra hour or two late to get a job done. And they are most likely getting a head start on or researching their assignments online by typing during a meeting. Listening to music at their desk, meanwhile, may help them focus while they work.
Managers, he said, need to be flexible and go the extra mile to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of millennials.
“Take the extra efforts to make this generation a better asset,” he said.
Grayson stressed the importance of interns in public service. Young people, he said, need to be around adults who are making public service their career.
Examples of mentoring up by millennials in government can already be seen, Grayson said, by the use of social networking, video games and instant messaging as ways of communication in the White House and by the armed forces in Afghanistan.