My previous blog entry discussed my concerns about
whether the “Millennial” generation (people ages 18 to 29) has the ability to
understand and implement good financial practices—either at home or in the
workplace—based on the social trends observed by the University of Michigan and
others. I’m going to continue down this
path, as the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research has uncovered
another social trend that in my view, is related to my previous observations
about the Millennial’s financial practices, and that will affect how we teach finance
in the workplace. That is, college
students today are about 40% less empathetic than their counterparts from 20 or
30 years ago. These findings were recently
presented in Boston at
the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science—take a look at
this URL for more details, as well as an interesting podcast: http://www.physorg.com/news194201935.html
You’re probably thinking, “What does
this have to do with finance?” or “As a learning professional or finance
practitioner, why should I care about this?”
Give me a couple of paragraphs to make my case…
Finance is about identifying and analyzing options
to determine the best course of action.
To do this effectively, the practitioner has to have a good
understanding of how a system works, and the implications that a change in one
of the sub-systems will have on the entire system. As an example, think about how changing
credit terms will affect sales, and how the corresponding change in sales will
affect inventory, and eventually manufacturing.
Believe it or not, empathy is a quality that facilitates this analysis.
The young Millennials who are joining our work
organizations lack empathy, perhaps because of the rise in social media. The social networks of today place the
individual squarely in the center, with the power to choose when and how to
connect with others. Rather than having
a face-to-face conversation, the Millennials typically choose to read their
friends’ Facebook pages. The researchers
at the University of Michigan see the current group of college students—sometimes called “Generation
Me”—as one of the most self-centered, narcissistic, competitive, confident and
individualistic in recent history. So
how do we train Generation Me to become effective contributors to our work
organizations, particularly when it comes to finance?
First, we need to recognize that this generation, more
than ever, is accustomed to accessing information on-demand, which lends itself
to asynchronous content delivery in either a self-study or blended
environment. Providing this generation
with a classroom-based learning experience without any online support or
resources would, in my view, be a mistake.
Second, we need to recognize that our Generation Me workers typically do
not join the workplace with an appreciation for the team or interrelatedness of
distinct work areas. This means that we
will have to educate them on how the entire organization works together to
deliver a product or service to the ultimate consumer. Last, and perhaps most important, we will
need to teach Generation Me to look at situations and options from multiple
perspectives, not just their own. We
will need to make them socially and organizationally aware, and yes, perhaps
even empathetic.
Let me
know your thoughts. As always, you can post your comments
to this blog or send an email to me at my personal email address: pae@tmiwebmail.com.
Until next time,
Trish
