Millennials: The Most Flexible Employees

Younger workers often get a bad rap these days. The cliché is that Millennials lack loyalty to employers, demand too much and are in constant need of praise. However, some new research suggests that these characterizations are misguided, or at least incomplete.

According to a new survey from real estate firm Coldwell Banker Commercial Affiliates, Millennials are typically more flexible than both their Gen X and Boomer colleagues when it comes to office layout, the length of their daily commute, their willingness to forgo working from home and their ability to work remotely from mobile devices.

The survey, of more than 2,000 U.S. adults, found that:

Millennials are willing to commute nearly twice as long as any other generation (an average of 51 minutes) to get to work each day, compared to 36 minutes for Gen Xers and 31 minutes for Boomers.

Nearly two in three Millennials (63%) and 54% of Gen Xers would be as comfortable working from a mobile device such as a phone, tablet or laptop, as they would be working from a desktop computer.

Most Millennials (59%) would be comfortable sharing their workspace with someone else, as compared to only 46% of Gen Xers and 49% of Boomers.

Being flexible is an essential component of success in the modern workplace. It seems that younger workers bring that attribute to a greater degree than is the case with older workers. That’s a big plus.