That spells trouble for a lot of organizations with poor middle management and even poorer infrastructure and systems designed to grow and retain employees.

The number one thing that young professionals are looking for is professional development and growth. They don’t want to feel that spending years with your organization, even while getting a decent sized paycheck, will hinder their career later down the road.

In the Bauer Knowledge initiative, millennials involved in the project were encouraged to create their own hierarchy of needs based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as a framework.

Using TGI Clickstream, Bauer segmented the 16-34-year-old audience attitudinally and discovered five very distinct segments: The Influencers, The Adopters, The Apprentices, The Entertained and The Contented.

The different segments generated distinct hierarchy pyramids. For instance, for The Influencers, their physiological needs include the basics, such as food and water, but also their smartphone or laptop as it is the main way they access the internet and feel  they feel ‘lost without it’.

For The Apprentices, self-actualization is all about just being happy with what they have got at that moment in time, not necessarily because of the objects they have in their life.