Spring 2017: A Generation of Change

Inventive, hard-working people surround me every day at work. In addition to the Hankamer School of Business faculty and staff, it’s a blessing to work in the midst of approximately 4,000 millennial students. It can be baffling to read and hear negative comments about the first digitally native generation—they’re “lazy,” “entitled,” “rude” or “disloyal.” Those are not descriptions of the young people with which I interact.

This issue of the Baylor Business Review explores the preconceived notions about generational divides in the workplace. It introduces us to a few Baylor millennials making their way in the working world traditionally and non-traditionally. We hear from organizational leaders who present a firsthand account of their experiences, as well as researchers who provide insight into the economic and social implications of a millennial workforce. From baby boomers to Generation Xers to millennials, this issue delves into generational differences and ultimately, what makes all workers feel successful.

You, our readers, requested this issue’s theme in the last Baylor Business Review readership survey. This annual readership survey allows us to produce the best business school magazine for our readers, and we ask you continue to provide your feedback. We will be distributing the survey in the coming weeks, so please watch for an email from Baylor Business. If you’d like to be added to our email list, please visit baylor.edu/business/email.

Terry S. Maness
Dean, Hankamer School of Business

Baylor Business Review, Spring 2017

Three Improvements to Generational Analyses

By Eric Krell

Here’s a quick quiz to determine how you prefer to be managed; please select all statements that apply: In my business organization, I…

1. Seek projects that offer meaningful work.
2. Value a flexible work schedule.
3. Prefer to be mentored than to take orders from a command-and-control manager.
4. Want assignments that play to my strengths.
5. Use social media technology.

If you selected one or more answers, congratulations, you’re a millennial!

This distinctly Gen X sarcasm serves a point: Too much of the swelling “How to Manage Millennials” guidance flooding business outlets is off the mark. Thankfully, this bad news is driving a positive development: the generation of more rigorous, relevant and actionable analyses of generational workplace dynamics. “While pithy descriptions of what makes millennials unique are presented as self-evident and seem to have a ring of truth to them, very few are supported with solid empirical research, writes KPMG executive Bruce Pfau, who cites several new meta-studies of millennial workplace research conducted by academics, consulting and research firms, and the U.S. Department of Defense.”¹

Following a seven-year workforce study at Facebook, the company “found that millennials’ wants and needs are strikingly similar to those of colleagues from different generations,” Facebook Head of People Lori Goler asserts in the Harvard Business Review. “Millennials want to do meaningful work and be part of something that will have a positive impact on the world,” Goler explains. “…But our data indicates that at Facebook—and probably many other organizations—people of all generations have begun to redefine fulfillment in this way.”²

This viewpoint holds true across other facets of human resources (HR). AT&T’s regular benchmarks of its workforce generations, notes Senior Vice President of Human Resources Operations Scott Smith, show that while a number of compensation and benefits offerings appeal to millennials, other generations share many of the same preferences.

Unhelpful millennial management guidance tends to succumb to the following flaws: broad generalizations; the miscasting of developmental, organizational and technological drivers as unique generational qualities; and the gleaning of “insights” from less-than-rigorous research.

Millennials are not categorically “more narcissistic” than Gen Xers, but single 25-year-olds tend to be more self-involved than married 45-year-olds because they are seeking to discover and advance their adult identities (age factor). Today’s 20-somethings more frequently document their lives compared to baby boomers in the early 1970s, but social media did not exist back then (technology factor). And, yes, millennials are placed under the HR microscope, but this shift also relates to major advances in human capital management (organizational/technological factor).

That’s not to say that millennials are no different than Gen X, baby boomers or the “Centennial” generation nipping at their heels. Rather, a smaller set of more subtle generational differences stem from key sociological, business and technological forces. So, when looking at generational differences, it is helpful to:

Apply deeper scrutiny to all workforce research and data.

Relevant signals in high-quality generational research also can be difficult to detect. Research from people and organizational advisory firm Korn Ferry indicates that millennials are notably less willing to work long hours compared to Gen X-er and baby boomers.³ Yet, a statistically rigorous examination of tens of thousands of millennial-aged Happify users finds that millennials are obsessed with their jobs.⁴ Which finding is correct? Both. The first survey is based on feedback from roughly 1,000 senior executives and measures their perception of younger workers. The second analysis examines word usage and frequency on a social media platform. In addition to examining research nuances more closely, it helps to know what research is flawed (if you can reasonably replace the word “millennials” with “humans” in any declarative sentence, for example, consider moving on). A 2015 multigenerational survey by IBM of more than 1,700 employees concludes that “Millennials’ attitudes are not poles apart from other employees’” while debunking common millennial myths, including the following:

• Myth: Millennials’ career goals and expectations are different from those of older generations.
• Myth: Millennials want constant acclaim and think everyone on the team should get a trophy.
• Myth: Millennials are digital addicts who want to do—and share—everything online, without regard for personal or professional boundaries.⁵

Zero in on most important data points and characteristics.

If you can focus on only one millennial-related data point here it is: 75.4 million. That was the population of U.S. millennials reported in April 2016, when the group began outnumbering the country’s 74.9 million baby boomers.⁶ Within the decade, millennials will dominate the workforce and the U.S. consumer market. When it comes to qualitative characteristics, keep in mind that millennials are the first digitally native age group. “They grew up with advanced technology and don’t really know a world without it,” Smith notes. “These experiences allow them to see situations from different angles and bring innovative ideas to the table.”

Look more broadly at (inter)related drivers of workforce change.

Millennials began their professional lives amid an unprecedented combination of technological advancements: the birth of Google, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram; the adoption of cloud, social, mobile and big data; and an explosion of massive cybersecurity risks. Historic macroeconomic stress and numerous industry and business transformations also greatly influence how millennials—and other generations—view the employee-employer relationship.

In our data-deluged jobs and lives, it can be easy to succumb to convenient generalizations and tidy explanations. But this approach tends to be off the mark when assessing generational differences in the workplace. That’s why it’s better to apply more rigor to generational analyses while keeping in mind a line from a Maya Angelou poem cited in a popular Apple iPhone ad: We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.⁷

 

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¹ _{Pfau, Bruce. “What Do Millennials Really Want at Work? The Same Things the Rest of Us Do,” Harvard Business Review, April 7, 2016: https://hbr.org/2016/04/what-do-millennials-really-want-at-work.}
² _{Goler, Lori. “What Facebook Knows about Engaging Millennial Employees,” Harvard Business Review, Dec. 16, 2015: https://hbr.org/2015/12/what-facebook-knows-about-engaging-millennial-employees.}
³ _{“Making an Impact” Tops the List of What Matters Most to Millennial Talent – Income Comes in Last,” Korn Ferry survey, July 14, 2016: http://www.kornferry.com/press/making-an-impact-tops-the-list-of-what-matters-most-to-millennial-talent-income-comes-in-last/.}
⁴ _{Zilca, Ran. “Research: Millennials Think About Work too Much,” Harvard Business Review, July 15, 2016: https://hbr.org/2016/07/research-millennials-think-about-work-too-much.}
⁵ _{“Myths, exaggerations and uncomfortable truths: The real story behind Millennials in the workplace,” IBM Institute of Business Value, 2015: http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/gbs/thoughtleadership/millennialworkplace/.}
⁶ _{Fry, Richard. “Millennials overtake Baby Boomers as America’s largest Generation,” Pew Research Center, April 25, 2016: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/25/millennials-overtake-baby-boomers/.}
⁷ _{https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztMfBZvZF_Y.}

Baylor Business Review, Spring 2017

A Not-So-Traditional Career Path

By Becca Broaddus

Growing up in the Gaston home, MENSA puzzles replaced coloring books on the coffee table. Kamille Gaston lauds her mother, who was widowed when Kamille was just 4 years old, as an incredibly strong woman who raised strong women, pushing her two daughters to be their best selves.

“To [my mom], it wasn’t, ‘Did you do the bare minimum?’ It was, ‘Did you do the absolute best you could?’ Those are things that I carry with me,” Gaston said. “Am I doing the best I can? Am I helping those around me do the best they can?”

Kamille Gaston was celebrated for her strong work ethic and kind heart early on. In first grade, Gaston’s school principal nicknamed her “Lovebug.” Now in her career, her reputation for working hard and loving others continues. Her passion is people.

“That sounds like such a cliché, [human resources] answer,” she remarks. “It’s about the fulfillment of others, and others being taking care of. I want to create and live in a more compassionate and understanding world.”

Gaston’s answer is a self-described HR cliché, which suits her, since she graduated with a degree in Human Resources Management.

After graduating from Baylor, she worked in a demanding position that clarified her next career step. Next, she wanted to work in a human resources (HR) department that could invest in her training and development. So she waited for the perfect job opportunity at her mother’s house.

“I didn’t just go to my parents’ house and sit on the couch and eat ice cream,” Gaston said. “I had a nest egg. I paid rent. I had been thrown into a management position, and seeing I had opportunity to grow, I wanted to make sure the job I did included that.”

In her commitment to finding the right job, she remained unemployed for eight months and even turned down some job offers.

“At the time, I had to think, ‘If I accept this job, what does that mean? What am I getting? What am I giving up?’”

Gaston stopped asking those questions when on a visit to Waco, she attended a career fair and met an Aramark recruiter who told her about the Accelerate2Leadership Program.

“The next job I took needed to give me the tools to manage others,” she said. “The way [the program is] built… is to help you lead. I was so grateful that I found what I was looking for.”

So the Texas native braved a cold, Tex-Mex-barren Philadelphia for the long-sought-after HR gig at Aramark corporate headquarters. Gaston credits her role as an HR specialist for helping her “learn and grow as a person, a professional and a manager.” In addition to gaining hands-on HR experience, Gaston provided support to a large-scale project, the scope of which involved nearly the entire U.S. portfolio, which includes more than 70,000 employees. Her ability to flourish and excel in that project guided her toward a different role in the company. After 18 months as an HR specialist, Gaston left human resources for a position as a business analyst to continue her focus on labor initiatives at Aramark.

“It’s still a mental struggle for me… to shift my career track away from the thing that I’ve poured so much into for the past five years,” she admits. “But this is a natural next step for me right now. This isn’t ending my HR career—it’s the next step in a more fluid career path. I see myself in a role where I am influencing positive change within an organization. I’m open to what that looks like.”

Her career path may be fluid and unpredictable, but Gaston knows one thing: Her role will include helping people.

Baylor Business Review, Spring 2017

By Becca Broaddus

Your smartphone buzzes on the table next to you, and you reach for it—wanting to know who texted, or emailed, or posted on your Facebook wall, or somehow virtually reached out to you. That little red bubble in the corner of the app taunts you. You can’t help it—you have to know.

Does this scenario sound familiar? If so, you are probably addicted to your smartphone, and you are not alone.

Psychologically, our smartphones are designed to be addictive. The intermittent nature of alerts creates an attachment and a resulting, Pavlovian-type response.

“Humans are relationship driven,” Ben H. Williams Professor of Marketing and Director of the Center for Nonprofit Leadership & Service Jim Roberts said. “When we can share little victories in our life with other people [on social media], that brings us pleasure.”

When phones provide a positive experience or connection to another person, the phone-checking behavior is reinforced. This addictive behavior affects Americans’ relationships, happiness, upward mobility at work and even life expectancy.

Marketing faculty members Jim Roberts, author of the smartphone addiction book “Too Much of a Good Thing: Are You Addicted to Your Smartphone?” and Meredith David have focused their recent research on the effects of smartphone snubbing, called “phubbing,” on relationships.

In the presence of loved ones, many Americans of all ages find themselves checked out of conversations and mindlessly scrolling. It has become so ubiquitous that in 2016, Chick-fil-A restaurants created a “family challenge,” which dares customers to silence and put away their phones for a distraction-free meal.

“We need to try to be cognizant of the time we’re spending on our phones while we’re with others,” David, assistant professor of Marketing, said. “Because most of the time, we don’t even realize consciously that we’re on our phone ignoring this person, but that person realizes it. It hurts their feelings.”

Roberts adds, “We assume millennials are the worst [about phubbing] because they’re digital natives, but our feelings are still hurt whether we’re a millennial or an older adult when we are phubbed.”

Their research suggests those whose romantic partners exhibit more phubbing behaviors are more likely to experience conflict in the relationship and have lower levels of satisfaction. More recently, the duo’s research indicates the negative effects of phubbing extend beyond the dinner table.

“If you are using your smartphone during meetings at work or your boss is using a smartphone in a meeting, it can lower your motivation at work,” Roberts said. “You feel diminished by that.”

Beyond adverse relational effects, on a more somber note, the United States Department of Transportation reported cell phones are involved in 1.6 million auto crashes each year that cause a half million injuries and take approximately 6,000 lives.

Tristan Harris, former product philosopher at Google, has had enough of smartphone addiction. In an effort to hold developers responsible for intentionally creating addictive operating systems and apps, he founded Time Well Spent, an advocacy group promoting the creation of a sort of “Hippocratic Oath” for software designers to prevent them from creating apps and programs meant to encourage addiction.

In a recent The Atlantic article, Harris insisted, “There needs to be new ratings, new criteria, new design standards, new certification standards…There is a way to design based not on addiction.”

Smartphone addiction is affecting Americans’ lives, but the remedy is still being decided. Harris is targeting technology designers and developers, while local and state governments adopt laws against smartphone-related distracted driving. According to distraction.gov statistics, 46 states currently ban texting for all drivers. In New Jersey, a measure allowing the fining of distracted walking has been proposed.

“Smartphones are not bad,” Roberts said. “We love smartphones, but we love them too much. We’ve crossed our tipping points. We don’t pay attention to our romantic partners. We don’t pay attention when we’re driving. The good things about smartphones have morphed into bad things about smartphones.”

 

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Are You a Phubber? Take the Quiz.

1. When I am having a meal with others (at home or in a restaurant), I will pull out and check my cell phone. ▢ Yes ▢ No
2. I always have my cell phone in sight when I am spending time with others. ▢ Yes ▢ No
3. I often keep my cell phone in my hand when I am with others. ▢ Yes ▢ No
4. If my cell phone rings or beeps, I will pull it out and check, even if I am talking with someone. ▢ Yes ▢ No
5. I have been caught glancing at my cell phone when talking to someone. ▢ Yes ▢ No
6. When I am hanging with friends, I don’t hesitate to check my cell phone if I am bored, get a text or some other notification. ▢ Yes ▢ No
7. I will use my cell phone when I am talking with friends. ▢ Yes ▢ No
8. I use my cell phone when I am on a date or with my romantic partner. ▢ Yes ▢ No
9. If there is a lull in a conversation, I will play on my cell phone. ▢ Yes ▢ No

The Results Are In…To calculate your score, simply add up the number of “yes” responses to each of the nine statements and check how you did below.

6+ “yes” responses

Yikes! You should consider some phubbing rehabilitation.

3-5 “yes” responses

Be careful. You are on the edge of the slippery slope to phubbing.

1-2 “yes” responses

You are a master of cell-control or you don’t have any friends (just kidding).

Baylor Business Review, Spring 2017

A Realistic Dreamer: From the Stage to the Classroom

By Becca Broaddus

Brenna Haffey doesn’t know what she wants to be when she grows up. She has a lot of options: music, business, healthcare or maybe another industry she hasn’t thought of yet.

“I like to consider myself a realistic dreamer, so I’m not going to put all of my eggs in one basket,” she said. “I like to be prepared, but I am very motivated and driven. I know where my future leads me will be right for me, and I’ll do really well and excel in it, just because that’s the nature of my go-getter personality.”

The junior Baylor Business Fellows student is majoring in Marketing and Business Spanish with a minor in Chinese. She is also a professional singer.

Even her pauses of “um” and “uh” sound musical as she lists some of the accomplishments of her 21 years. She gets her musical propensity naturally, her parents met in a rock band in New York City, before later leaving for her mother to pursue a medical career in Houston. Music is a big part of her life. She started singing her original songs at open mic nights in Houston at 15, escorted by her father—sometimes singing at as many as three venues a night.

“Music exemplifies what it means to be diligent in pursuing a long-term goal because it’s a long-term commitment that you address every single day,” she said. “I kind of treat my music as a business, which is why I think I’ve been so successful with it.”

In addition to her solo career, she sings in Bella Voce, a highly select women’s ensemble comprised primarily of music majors at Baylor. But that’s not her only extracurricular activity. The trilingual junior is active in the Baylor hip hop dance club Poppers, Lockers & Breakers, Delta Sigma Pi professional business fraternity and business student organization Phi Beta Lambda. Not to mention she plays piano, bass and guitar, powerlifts, is a second-degree black belt in Taekwondo, and is writing a book. (No, she doesn’t have a Netflix account.)

She admits she puts a lot of pressure on herself, but she loves every activity in which she’s involved right now.

“Everything I’m involved in, I want to be involved in, and I love so much,” she said. “Because now I know what that’s like, that’s what I’m going to pursue in my future. I don’t know what it’ll be that I do, but I know it’s going to be something that’s very tailored to the kind of person I am… Whatever my future career will be, I envision it being a position that’s not created yet. I feel like whatever I end up doing is going to be a position that I create or something that I make, because it’s going to be something that doesn’t already exist. I’m going to forge my way into doing whatever I want to do.”

Right now, that’s interning at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) Consulting this summer. But from there, your guess is as good as Brenna’s. She may take a year off after graduation to focus on her music, get a graduate degree, or maybe her internship will open up new opportunities. She will figure it out when she gets there.

Baylor Business Review, Spring 2017