Bennett J. Loudon

Staff writer

Bill Murtha, president and CEO of Roberts Communications, regularly sets aside time for mentoring over lunch with younger workers at the Rochester advertising and public relations agency.

But it's Murtha who's getting trained at those meetings. It's his way of staying in touch with millennials — the generation born between 1980 and 2000 that are quickly joining the workforce in large numbers.

"I want them to teach me," he said. "We have lots of wisdom, but they have lots of wisdom, and this is what I want to learn — new things online, what's the most neatest, hippest, cool application?

"I would love someone to say, 'Hey, Bill, this is how you connect with this, and, by the way, you're doing something goofy with your Twitter feed. You're not really putting the right kind of stuff out there that people care about, or whatever it is."

In the not-too-distance future, everyone will be paying more attention to millennials. Today, they account for about 35 percent of the workforce nationwide and represent a key audience for consumer products and entertainment industries.

There are about 212,000 of them in Monroe County, or about 28 percent of the population. But by 2025, they are going to make up 75 percent of the workforce, said Beth Sears, a local professional coach and president of Workplace Communication.

"If you don't find out how to work with them you're going to be in trouble," she said.

Disruptive generation

It's not just that there is an onslaught of younger people eager to takeover the workplace. They are more diverse, better educated, more interested in sustainability than brand loyalty, and don't want to put in traditional hours at the office.

They prefer to work in teams, often relying on the help of their social media connections. About 60 percent of them live with their parents after college, and sometimes do so well into their 30s, said Dawn Meza Soufleris, a sociologist who has studied millennials and an associate vice president at Rochester Institute of Technology.

"When they are in full control, and some of them are already in control in some of these small companies, they are going to change how we spend, what we do, and decisions that are made," said Soufleris. "If you continue doing business as usual you will fail."

The generation is burdened by college debt, there are more females graduating from college than males, and about 40 percent of millennials are non-white, said Barry Friedman, an associate professor of economics and management at the University of Rochester's Simon Business School.

"They view work different from their cohorts who came before them," he said. "They like to separate work and family and leisure. They want training, they want to be marketable, and they want to be rich and famous real fast, which is unlike the people who will be supervising them, hence the conflict or potential conflict that has to be managed."

They are the generation of Columbine, 9/11, Virginia Tech, Oklahoma City — tragedies that forced their parents to focus on individual safety, Soufleris said.

"They don't do necessarily well with failure," Soufleris explained. "Before they fail they'll move on because they don't necessarily have the skill set to know how to fail because we wouldn't let them fail as parents."

They grew up with computers, smartphones, social media and trending topics, and are well connected to a large social circle. They're on Facebook and Twitter but use Snapchat, Vine and other apps to stay connected.

"They are constantly texting, checking social media, understanding what each other is doing pretty much 24-7. So when they go into a work environment they don't want to be in an office," Soufleris said. "They want to be at a table with other people their age brainstorming, using technology. They're interested in companies that are very progressive."

"They're a little bit more opportunistic," said Brad Flower, a financial adviser born in 1987 and president of the Rochester Young Professionals, a nonprofit group of twenty- and thirtysomethings. "There's not necessarily the same overarching sense of commitment in terms of required commitment that baby boomers assumed they had."

They also don't want to be "another cog in the wheel," said Nate Bank, a 32-year-old attorney who is also past president of RYP.

"For the most part I think maybe millennials were maybe seen a little bit differently because of the way we approached the job market, wanting to do our own thing, wanting to be involved in a career we feel more passionately about, or connected to on a personal level as opposed to what's in our best economic interest," said Bank.

And if things aren't working out with a company, they're likely to leave.

"I've witnessed it," Flower said. "I certainly have a fair amount of friends that had numerous jobs. I have clients that are in their 30s and have held eight jobs already throughout their working history, from their early 20s through their early 30s."

Try listening

While Soufleris described the generation as having a "very high self estem," millennials aren't completely selfish. For instance, they "don't want to just buy a product, but (they) want to save the tops of those yogurt containers because they're donating money to the Komen Cancer Coalition," Murtha said.

"This whole idea of just signing up and giving money to the United Way is sort of like your father's Oldsmobile," he explained.

Bank said his decision to become an attorney and work primarily with startups serves a greater good: to help grow Rochester economy.

"I guess you could say that was a decision of mine, trying to direct my career toward what I thought was most important for the Rochester area," he said. "I'm very excited to see our generation 20 years from now and being the established leaders, and hopefully maintaining a good amount of that entrepreneurial creativity driven behavior and viewpoint."

Sears said many organizations and older workers simply miss the truth when it comes to younger workers, when in fact the generation wants to focus on results versus the number of hours clocked on a time card.

"Their boss is a baby boomer who grew up saying, 'You work 60 hours a week,' " Sears said. "They just don't understand what's wrong with these millennials. They are so needy and they expect this that and the other thing. What millenials truly want is somebody to mentor them and give them a clear career path, otherwise they leave.

"A lot of it is misunderstanding about where the people from the different generations came from and it effects how they're perceived."

Managers, supervisors and older co-workers need to stop and listen to millennials.

"We we need to stop talking about them and start to understand and listen to them," Murtha said. "What do they have to tell us about what's going to be happening next? What do they see their role in changing our culture, changing our point of view?"

BLOUDON@DemocratandChronicle.com

Twitter.com/BennettLoudon

Millennials by the numbers

1980-2000: Birth years

212,000: Number in Monroe County

87 million: Number nationwide.

75: Percentage with a social networking site.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau; Pew Research Center.

Advice: Working with millennials

Reevalutate your own acceptance of change in the workplace, along with how you deal with people who are different from you.

Think about team building digitally, rather than just face to face. Use technology to meet virtually.

Approach each worker as an individual. Millennials want mentors, but the type of feedback they seek is more like a Twitter feed, short frequent bits of information that keeps them in the loop.

Millennials seek flexibility, opportunities to work in teams with a project-based approach.

Teamwork for millennials means more than sitting at a table with other workers. They'll bring their laptops or tablets and will use them for research and multi-tasking during meetings.

They seek work environments that they consider sustainable, innovative and creative.

Millennials want to know there is a clear career path open to them. If they don't see that they will move on to another job.