Job ‘dissatisfaction’ high among millennials

Two out of every five Filipino millennials are likely to ditch their current jobs in the next two years mainly due to an unsatisfied craving for leadership skills development.

This puts some businesses at risk of losing their millennial talent—young adults who were born after 1982 and who have come of age in the age of the Internet, according to the fifth annual Millennial Survey of UK-based global professional services firm Deloitte.

Given the choice, 40 percent of Filipino millennials would leave their current employers within two years and the ratio would climb to 64 percent when the timeframe was stretched out to 2020, based on the research released Friday by Deloitte’s local member firm Navarro Amper & Co.

On a global basis, 44 percent of millennials were expected to resign within two years while 66 percent were likely to quit within five years.

This dissatisfaction among millennial employees stemmed partly from feelings of being underutilized and the perception that they were not being developed as leaders. Based on the Deloitte research, 62 percent of Filipino millennials said their leadership skills were not being fully developed in their current organization.

Among those who said they planned to leave within two years, 61 percent felt that they were being overlooked for potential leadership positions.

“With a maximum age of 33, millennials are entering that period where they expect to have more say in the way their organization is run,” said Greg Navarro, managing partner and chief executive of Navarro Amper. “So in managing and engaging them, leaders have to keep this in mind and come up with a development track that recognizes that ambition: Is there room at the top for these young professionals and are they getting the necessary training for those posts?”

The survey also revealed that millennials were bringing their own values with them into the workplace.

Those currently occupying junior or senior level posts were asked what factors influenced them when making decisions at work. For Filipino millennials, personal values and morals came top of mind, with little discrepancy between job levels—74 percent of junior level and 76 percent of senior level millennials cited it as having a high degree of influence. The percentage was much higher than the world-wide average. Globally, 64 percent of senior level millennials and 49 percent of juniors relied on their personal values.

Regardless of job level, 69 percent of Filipino millennials also considered personal goals and ambitions when making decisions, while 59 percent thought about the formal targets or objectives of their organizations in their decision-making process.

To gain some insight into these personal values, the survey asked millennials what metrics they thought should be used when taking stock of a company’s success. An overwhelming number of Filipino millennials (81 percent) said business success should be measured by more than financial performance, compared to 87 percent globally.