{"Content":{"Id":"00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000","TypeId":"00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000","Title":"Seven things Arab ‘millennial’ youth wants to change","Text":"Sometimes called Generation-Y (Generation-X being the post World War II 1960s to 1980s), our millennial Arab youth exhibits many of the same behavioural peculiarities displayed elsewhere. But there are nuances within this region that mark out Middle East millennials to be, in some cases, even more millennial than others.
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\nFacing the impatient angst of youth as we now must, what seven things does Arab millennial youth want to change?
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\n1: Work-life balance
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\nThe new workforce wants to work differently. It wants to go to work in a different way and sometimes that means not going into an office at all. The advancement and proliferation of connected mobile technologies from smartphones to tablets and onwards means we don’t need to be sat in an office anyway. Millennials have already proven that they can text while skateboarding, so what’s so hard about working on the Metro or in a coffee shop? Firms that embrace the new mobility culture can potentially reap greater productivity out of the millennial workforce. Those that attempt to stifle this trend risk stifling themselves.
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\n2: Stronger social-civic fusion
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\nSurprisingly perhaps for the older generation who harbour some notion of the youth of today ‘just not caring’ about society -- they in fact do, they really do. Modern youth culture in our region sees a high percentage of individuals born into comfortable surroundings. As a result, this generation has more time to care about different things. Arab youth today wants us to understand the need for transparency, personal authenticity and the need to help society. As simplistic and glib as the curmudgeonly older generation may view them, modern youth actually wants stronger social-civic fusion and a better world for everyone. Where the impetuousness of youth dovetails with the reasoning of middle-aged perspicacity, great things may happen.
\n3: Appreciation for multi-tasking distraction syndrome
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\nOur current youth just needs to be understood. Yes, we know, you’ve heard that one before, so allow us to clarify the current position. Millennials are better at multi-tasking than their older counterparts; they love social media and can do several things at once. As many as 89% of Facebook users in the Arab world access the social networking website daily. Other social platforms enjoy similar Middle Eastern penetration. The downside is that Arab millennial multi-taskers are easily distracted. Arab youth wants employers to understand this and have, where necessary, social media workplace policy guidelines in place.
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\n4: Defined career paths
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\nSomewhat connected to our notion of flexible working and the work-life balance, the Arab youth of today doesn’t want a traditional job. They don’t want a traditional ‘annual review’ and a defined management training programme. Instead they want 360-degree continuous review processes based on a system or meritocracy and modular training that they can disassemble and repackage for themselves.
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\n5: Restarting start-up culture
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\nAccording to the results of the ASDA’A Burson-Marsteller Arab Youth Survey 2015, “Unemployment remains among the top three perceived obstacles facing the region, with four in five young Arabs concerned about unemployment.” Further, the survey suggests that nearly two in five young Arabs are looking to start a business within the next five years, with technology and retail being the top sectors of interest. Our youth wants this region to appear on those ‘best place to start a business polls’, whether they are in truth slightly flaky or not. In a region with so many heavyweight international enterprise employers, the youth of today wants a kind of renaissance of the Arabian market trading souq spirit -- but this time, with iPads please.
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\n6: Arabic in business
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\nAs a wider trend specific to our region, Arab youth has a strong traditionalist streak and wants to see the preservation of the Arabic language used in modern business. Surveys estimate that somewhere just over 50% of the Internet is written in English with Arabic language content making up what may be less than 1% by comparison. With Arabic language comes Arabic business comes Arabic warmth and the boundless civilities that characterise the culture of the region. Yes Arab youth will still play Candy Crush Saga in English, but at a grass roots level the need for Arabic is very real.
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\n7: Gender equality
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\nHuge advances have been made over the course of the last 50 years and more, but gender equality is still a focal point for change in the mind of Arab youth. His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum asked the following question in his book Flashes of Thought, “Can a society take any step forward without it’s better half?” But as much progress as we have made, we can not sit back and allow the push for diversity in all respects to be left to some invisible hand. This is a heartfelt concern for Arab youth today as it is for millennials all around the globe.
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\nThe generation game
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\nThe good news is that we may, at this stage, have understood something about the Arab youth of today. Those of us in our thirties, forties or fifties in Generation-X may have moved one step closer to the mindset of Generation-Y in their role as our next workforce and shapers of society.
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\nWe’ll assume that the Baby Boomers of the 1940s and the so-called ‘Silent Generation’ of 1920s era are leaving the worrying to us.
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\nOur next challenge is in understanding that the millennial Arab youth of today is already giving birth to Generation-Z. Thinking about the future is a full time job.
","CulturePrefix":null,"Summary":"There are varying definitions of the term ‘millennial’ as a measure of our youth population. Generally speaking we agree that this age group classification spans the years from the very start of the 1980s, right through to the year 2000.","Url":null,"FormattedDate":"01 August 2016","VideoUrl":"","Date":"0001-01-01T00:00:00","DetailImages":null,"ThumbnailImage":{"Url":"https://www.almaktouminitiatives.org/images/default-source/default-album/youth71606d7120674a34a8ad0da78110f79c.jpg?sfvrsn=b3d10b5_5","AlternativeText":"youth"}},"PreviousUrl":"could-social-entrepreneurship-help-balance-regional-wealth-creation","NextUrl":null}