Millennials in South Africa have itchy feet

In a 2016 worldwide study among millennials Deloitte found that many millennials have one foot out of the door. Millenials, also called the Millennial Generation or Gen Y, are those who were born roughly between the year 1980 and 2000. Their current age ranges from 16-36 years old.

The infographic below shows the percentage of Millenials that expect to leave their position of employment in the next five years.

Source: Deloitte

Millennials in emerging markets are the least loyal to their current organization

South Africa’s Millennials scored the second highest in the list. Meaning that 76% of South African Millenials currently employed think they will leave their current employer within the next five years.

The reason for South Africa’s millennials itchy feet lies in the lack of their leadership development: “Of great significance in the current survey results is the finding that 71 percent of those likely to leave in the next two years are unhappy with how their leadership skills are being developed—fully 17 points higher than among those intending to stay beyond 2020.” (Source: Deloitte) A second important finding from this research was that “Personal values have the greatest influence on Millennials’ decision making”.

For a country where leadership is often discussed; either glorifying our inspiring leaders of the past (Mandela), or the current lack of moral leadership (Zuma), there seem to be a lot who talk, but not a lot who walk the talk. Leadership is more than words afterall.

Organizations and companies in our beautiful country should head the signs that Deloitte’s research is pointing to:

• Organisations should take career path development seriously, or they will lose their most promising people
• It’s time for serious leadership development of 20 and 30 somethings
• Millenials want to live life according to their values, firstly these values need to be discovered and secondly Millennials want to align their values with companies that have similar values.

Is your company taking the development of your millenials seriously? We are interested to hear your feedback.

xpand can help you discover and develop your potential and promising leaders. 

Contact us on info-sa@xpand.eu  or www.xpand.eu/sa.


Renske Fizjohn 

xpand trainer & consultant
r.fitzjohn@xpand.eu