Stories

Millennials in the Workplace

In the latest installment of CBS Sunday Morning, the report "Millennials: New kids on the block" features DPR Construction's millennial employees. The youngest generation in the workforce, millennials are those born between 1981 and 2000.

The report also features Doug Woods—the "D" in DPR—a member of the baby boomer generation. Starting at the five minute mark of the video, Woods responds to the stereotype that millennial employees are overconfident. "What generation doesn't have those feelings?" he replies. "I grew up in the '60s. We were totally rebellious, and I think it's part of being young."

The feature then focuses on Alice Leung, Michael Pearson, Deepti Bhadkamkar and Brian Bolandi—some of DPR's millennial employees—who discuss how they view their generation and how growing up being told "you can be anything you want" affects them in the workplace. While DPR's millennial employees may not fully embrace the label of their generation, they confess it sometimes fits.

As each previous generation can attest to, today's youngest generation will eventually become tomorrow's older generation. As Brian Bolani puts it, "I'm 28 years old and I found myself saying, 'Kids these days!'"

Empowering employees is the key to building a solid future. As pointed out by the Talent Culture earlier this year, DPR empowers its employees with a flat, egalitarian culture without hierarchy. The principle of “what’s right, not who’s right"—listening closely to all employees, regardless of position—resonates with all generations, but specifically connects with millennials' sense of wanting purpose or meaning behind their jobs. Their desire fits with DPR’s way of connecting work to a greater goal—for example, taking pride in building a biotech manufacturing facility that produces drugs that benefit cancer patients.

DPR aims to inspire all its employees (millennials, baby-boomers or any other generation) to take pride in building to improve the world we live in.