Emmanuelle Duez: "This young generation is challenging yesterday’s models and first and foremost the corporate world"

INTERVIEW

Sustainability MAG: There are generations that have endorsed major societal changes. Do the generations you address, Y and Z, bring a new order and disruptive changes?

Emmanuelle Duez: Michel Serres talks about a major third anthropological revolution in the human history. After writing and printing, digitalization is turning everything upside down and this digital world gave birth to a population we call digital natives or millennials. A population of individuals he calls “homo numericus”, a kind of improved homo sapiens that will have a relationship to time, to others, to the planet, to technology, to success, to authority, to otherness that probably will be quite different from the previous generations. Not in a restricted generational sense, but in a sense of the proper evolution of humans. Because in reality, this topic is not about generations in the strictest sense, it is rather a global transformation momentum with, at this stage of transformation, of revolution, a population of individuals that have a role to play in re-inventing our society.

There probably is a nuance to add to Michel Serres’ analysis as he completely links the generational phenomenon, this anthropological revolution to the technological and digital revolution. Yet, we notice that this population of individuals is not only the result of this digital revolution but also the result of globalisation. It is also the result of the speeding up of time which is not only a technological acceleration but also an economic acceleration, a speeding up of knowledge-driven economy, a genetic acceleration, a demographic acceleration. Thus, there are dissensions as to whether digital change explains the advent of this millennial generation that challenges the corporate world and society at large or whether it is more globally, a complete ever-changing world that leads to mutating generations which reflect a period of enormous changes.

In both cases, this generation still has something distinctive as it reflects changes that outreach it.

Generations Y and Z are the unfortunate heirs to a society that is structurally in crisis. You mention an ecological distress in particular. How does it mark these generations?

If we look into these changes through the generational lens, the « heirs without heritage » concept used by Kofi Annan is really interesting because we see that we have an obsolescence of yesterday’s model, the need to reinvent another model and, in the midst of it, a population that will have to take up the torch, as all the generations had to by the way, but which has the special responsibility to reinvent models of society.

What is interesting to notice, is that when we consider this definition, we discern that it isn’t a question of age. It is not “those who were born after 1980 will have this responsibility”, “those who were born after 1995 will have that responsibility”. Admittedly, there are generational markers as for all generations but in reality this is about a population of individuals at a given moment which is aware of the ongoing changes and has a special responsibility.

Finally, this population of heirs without heritage, is all of us, whether we are 60 or 20 years old. When you are a little open to our world and aware of what is happening in it you tell yourself that in tomorrow’s world you will have to reinvent the traditional capitalist model, the political model in a context of strong transformation at European level and in the Western World, obviously the energetic model, and the environmental model which has a scheduled termination date. And this isn’t the prerogative of youth, it is a shared responsibility.

The very notion of generation seems overturned…

The concept of generations is a standardised concept. The two generation “popes”, Strauss and Howe, two American gurus on this topic, have theorized the generation cycle going back to the silent generation. They show that a generation lasts approximately 25 years with very strong generational markers and a tendency of the generation that follows to be in opposition with the previous one.

While observing the current phenomena of generations Y and Z, we notice that things are changing significantly. First, the rhythm as generation Y is a 15 year generation, generation Z will be probably less than 10 years and the following generation, which is already referred to as generation alpha, will be even shorter. It is clear that the rhythm is completely overturned.

Besides the extent of the phenomena isn’t the same anymore as today, talk about a globalized generational phenomena and, in this, we obviously see the digital impact. This suggests that the concept of strictly speaking generations doesn’t make really sense in a globalized, digital and accelerated world anymore. There are professors who consider that generations don’t exist anymore. Today, it wouldn’t make any sense to speak about generations every 5 years or every 4, 3, 2, 1 year in the coming years. And yet, the standard deviation in terms of values, of behaviours or references will remain the same. We keep being different but with generations that are increasingly shrinking, so that talking about generations today wouldn’t make much sense anymore.

The unprecedented questioning of the models we observe logically affects companies. How do young people perceive the corporate world?

This generation which not really is a generation challenges companies first and foremost. Companies are the first place where society is made as an adult. They are the heritage of decades of organisational theories, the heritage of yesterday’s world, with silo, vertical, statutory structures. They finally mirror a world which functioned differently, which was much less globalized, less mainstreamed, slower, less fluid, less connected. Where there wasn’t such a knowledge and skills obsolescence. Where the biggest ate the smallest, where there were continuous competitive advantages that could be protected by intellectual property. All this obviously explodes in our today’s world where Airbnb’s market valuation exceeds Mariott and Hyatt which together have 159 years of entrepreneurial existence, whereas, Airbnb has been existing for 8 years. And this is only an example which shows how much the world has changed. And thus, this young generation, heir to today’s world and not yesterday’s world, is challenging yesterday’s models and first and foremost the corporate world.

Organisations realize that companies will have to change in a compelling way as they have more and more difficulties to attract, retain and engage young talents and young clients. Moreover, a concept is appearing which we call the symmetry of attentions and which will be especially challenging for companies in the years to come. It is the fact that the internal value proposition has to be aligned with the external value proposition as in the end the collaborators are the company’s first ambassadors and consumers can influence the internal organisation models. Thus, we have a true alteration of the counter-powers within and outside the company, which imposes transparency of the organisations and the fact that they are perfectly aligned with their promises, inside as well as outside.

Self-fulfilment and realisation through one’s professional activity seem to be at the heart of the concerns now. How do you interpret the evolution of individuals’ expectations at work?

There is a change in the psychological contract, namely the relationship between a population and the corporate world. For the baby-boomer population, the psychological contract was their commitment in exchange of a lifetime job or in any way the security over a very long time. For the generation X it is their commitment in exchange of employability, meaning the possibility to grow within or outside the company. And for this young generation, we have their commitment in exchange of a professional and personal fulfilment that can pass through the development of new skills and knowledge as they are the babies of skills obsolescence and the advent of the knowledge-driven economy. This goes through the rejection of yesterday’s models because when asked what companies look like to them, they have very strong words: “They are hard, they are cruel, it is a jungle.” And with this they reject what they have identified as the sacrificial relationship maintained by their parents with the corporate world, which they don’t want to apply to themselves as committing without sense nor fulfilment in a context of job insecurity and shortening of all deadlines is not possible. Thus, we clearly notice the advent of a new psychological contract which redistributes the management deal a little for these new generations.

It’s the skills obsolescence thus that shapes the new relationships to work and companies…

The emerging numbers are literally mind-blowing. Fifty percent of today’s skills in the companies will potentially be obsolete in two years’ time, according to an Echos survey.

Eighty percent of the trades that will be recruiting in 2030 do not exist yet; we will have on average 13 different jobs in our life. When we asked young people under 20 how many jobs they think they will have in their life, several of them have answered an infinity. There is a total paradigm shift which destroys subordination as we will have to have many different careers in our life and meanwhile companies cannot promise long-term psychological and material security anymore. The deal in exchange of subordination is exploding, and there is a shift from subordination to collaboration; that is, tell me what you, the company, can offer in terms of fulfilment, sense, skills development, learning, working experience and individual experience at large, and in exchange I will tell you for how long I can commit myself. We will deal over the short term. We will probably experience the explosion of chosen freelance with many different legal forms which hide the question of portability of rights, technical legal topics that show all the challenges ahead of us. And this shapes a relationship to companies, to work, to ambition and to development which is very different from what we have known in the past.

A commitment crisis in this population is commonly pointed at. You have rather noticed the opposite?

This commitment question is crucial as it really is the nest of strong generational misunderstanding. Within our missions we often hear “ today’s and tomorrow’s collaborators don’t appreciate effort anymore, in our time it was different …”. In my opinion it is a very bad understanding of what is happening. On the contrary, it is a population which has high expectations regarding the corporate world and which has a highly significant commitment treasure as it considers that it is work that provides personal and professional fulfilment in so far we spend a great majority of our time there. But as we are in a context of job insecurity, when we get up, when we go to work and commit ourselves, it has to make sense, it has to be consistent with the individuals’ projections, dreams and aspirations, it has to be respectful and considerate.

We absolutely have to break this stereotype, it is not “run away”. We don’t know how to commit ourselves anymore. We don’t appreciate effort, in a context of precarious situations where the cards are completely reshuffled and where the company cannot offer anymore what it offered my parents. I will commit myself in exchang for a sense of recognition, transparency and trust.

It is thus an incentive for companies to go back to basics? Their purpose, their contribution to society?

It shapes, in terms of organisation prospective, companies that are raising a question that is anything but philosophical: what is our purpose? Companies have to carry meaning in themselves, inherently, they have to have a purpose, a reason to exist and thus, a reason that justifies the fact that a person commits to them. Merely providing work is not enough anymore. This questions a hot topic which is the companies’ social objective, their increased corporate purpose in particular, this means the role of the corporate social responsibility in the city which cannot only be an economically viable objective but has to make sense, has to have a purpose which will enable them to win the war on talents and the war on clients in the future. I believe that this increased corporate purpose is what will distinguish companies that will last in the years to come as they will have a high-quality human capital, from the companies that will decline as they will lose those talents that will make the choice tomorrow of inherently meaningful companies.

Also to be read in the dossier "When Millennials Spell The End of the Status Quo": 

• The profile of a Luxembourg Millennial