CPA Practice Advisor - 23

THE MILLENNIAL ADVISOR

GONE!?!
WHAT IF YOU looked around your office and suddenly realized you were the only person
left? What would you do first, would you get out of your chair and start to look around
for your co-workers, would you page them on the intercom, would you send them a fax
GARRETT WAGNER, CPA

CEO/Founder, C3 Evolution Group
garrett.wagner@cpapracticeadvisor.com

What if after looking around, you
realized that you were the last person left and everything, all the work,
everything fell on your shoulders?
Would you be able to get it all done?
Would you be ready to deal with it,
the pressure and time commitments
day in and day out? This may sound
unlikely, but stop for a moment and
imagine if this could happen in the
accounting profession.
What if by the time you finished
this article, all the millennials inside
your company were gone? Statistically that would mean 35% of your
company would be gone, according
to the latest analysis of U.S. Census
Bureau data by the Pew Research
Center. At first you may celebrate,
no longer having to deal with those
so-called entitled millennials. But
after the party had ended would you
begin to take stock and wonder why
they were gone?
This may sound like a horror
movie or maybe even a cause for
celebration depending on your perspective, but it is a reality that many
organizations are rapidly heading
toward. As they cling to the past
and what they know and have grown
used to, firms are finding it harder
to retain the millennial mind. One
common theme from millennials in
the accounting profession, they are
ready for a change where they work,
and we are heading toward a tipping
point where more will leave their
current jobs for other opportunities.
More than ever before in the past,
the millennial generation's frustrations are moving beyond the com-

or better yet, would you just start yelling?
mon themes - technology, process
improvement, billable hours - and
are heading toward an immediate
desire to stop putting up with the
status que and quit their jobs.
But what is causing the increase
in the future of this profession to
have such a strong desire to quit
their jobs, and how do we remedy
this issue so we don't end up with
35% of our workforce disappearing?
The major factor driving this
increase in dissatisfaction with
millennial jobs is that, sadly, nothing has changed. The problems
our profession faces are not new
nor unique to any one company or
organization. However, for most
organizations no real progress is
being made to address the variety
of underlying issues. What has been
broken continues to be broken and
unlike Generation X, millennials
are not eager to wait another 30
years to go through each day with
a growing number of broken issues.
Imagine if each day you arrived at
home, your refrigerator was broken,
it stayed on, but no longer got cold.
How long would you wait to get it
fixed? Millennials grew up in a world
full of rapid and constant changes,
this is what they know and expect,
and if they do not see it happening
ever where they work, they will not
be willing to stick around forever
and keep waiting.
As this generation sees change
continuing to not happen, it is
losing hope that change will be
coming where they work. We are
on our way to a tipping point in the
industry where more millennials
may end up quitting their job and

only worsen the talent shortage our
industry is already facing. Before
you look at this as another reason
to call millennials entitled, think
about this question: How long would
you want to keep working at a job
where things were not changing
for the better and the issues it is
faced with continue to grow and not
be addressed? Instead of taking a
negative view of the millennial
generations for waiting things
to improve where they work and
instead of being too busy to make
change happen yourself, why don't
we put the millennial generation to
work fixing our issues and retain and
engage them where they work?
One of the greatest challenges
in making change happen for any
organization is rallying their people
around a change initiative and getting those people to successfully
drive that change. Harness the
passion and energy of millennials

JUNE 2019 ■

and task and empower them to drive
change where they work. Don't let
them continue to grow dissatisfied
inside the four walls of their offices,
turn their energy around to work
for you.
Start now and, once you finish
reading this article, challenge the
millennials inside your office to
come up with one thing to change
and a plan to make that change
happen. Then do the hardest most
unnatural thing possible: let them
do it. Take a step back, be open
to change and see what happens.
Best case scenario, your energetic
millennials will spend some time
working and fix an issue that needs
fixing. Worst case, they have less
time to spend on Snapchat during
the workday, but learn from their
efforts so that they can be more
successful the next time. ■

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