Special names are commonly given to 4 generations, as follows:
- Baby Boomers: born after the WWII (1946 – 1964)
- Generation X: born between 1965 and 1980
- Generation Y or Millenials: born from 1981 to today.
Here is what a 2014 Business Review USA article has to say about the generations that are now in school:
On Attention Span
To train Millennials, create entertaining video lessons that are no longer than three minutes. With anything much longer, you will lose your audience.
In the last year, the average length of internet videos has dropped from 6.4 minutes to 5.1 minutes, according to comScore. In 2008, Lloyds TBS Insurance also found that the average attention span has dropped from 12 minutes to 5 minutes in just 10 years. I wager this isn’t a coincidence.
On Motivation
Gen Y has zero tolerance for irrelevant content. Think about it: they have instant, on-demand access to billions of articles, videos, blog posts and images at almost no cost. Technology has trained them to skip whatever seems boring and irrelevant.
Using a short introduction video, image, headline or bullet points, show why each lesson or training module is worth their time. Cue your learners to think, “This is information I must know,” instead of, “I’m going to skip this if I’m not entertained in five seconds.”
“The Disappearing Act: Why Millenials Leave Companies —and How L&D Can Entice Them to Stay” whitepaper describes millenials’ value set and shows how learning and development (L&D) can support each value.
On Values
The whitepaper lists five values that are most important to millennial (in the work place) as follows:
- opportunities for development
- doing meaningful work
- autonomy in how they do their work
- being efficient
- being transparent.
Another resource is the following article:
