The Life of Y: Engaging Millennials as Employees and Consumers.

The Life of Y: Engaging Millennials as Employees and Consumers by Debashish Sengupta, Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd., Delhi, 2018, Pages 284, Price Rs. 495/

'The life of Y' by Debashish Sengupta is a good work on understanding the life of millennial not just within organizations and workplace but also in the burgeoning social and formal marketplace as consumers of products and services. The book provides valuable insights into the way Gen Y thinks but also disproves some of the perceptual myths and stereotypes associated with them.

The idea of his book revolves around engaging the millennial generation at workplace, market place and as contributing members of the society. Millennials have been defined as the generation Y (Gen Y), born between 1980 and 2000 are expected to account for roughly 75 percent of the global workforce by 2025. The author emphasizes that to thrive and to survive in this dynamic changing world, corporates need to attract, train and retain the best of these talented workforce. For this employers need to understand their career aspirations, their attitudes towards work, and the factors that provide them job satisfaction. Organizations that are able to successfully understand their behavior will be the ones that will rise to the top in future.

The book is structured and phased into three parts:

Part-I, covers 'Unravelling Millennial Behavior" in which the author emphasizes that there is a need for a deeper dive into their lives and their experiences to truly understand them and their behavior. He stresses the need to understand contextual and environmental influences which are never static but evolve and change over time. So according to him keeping a track of changes on the outside will be important in understanding their behavior.

Part-II covers 'The life of Y" which highlights the emotional and social wellness paradox, Material wellness paradox, Physiological wellness paradox and reversal of millennial happiness. In emotional and social wellness paradox he has covered their unique emotional and social support systems that are almost non-existent and millennial are also growing lonelier which leads to anxiety in them and make them more prone to depression. Material wellness paradox means that they have grown up with high career aspirations on one hand and these aspirations for a good life are not matched by their incomes on the other. In Physiological wellness paradox he talked about physiological stress and narrated with lucid examples that millennials are not only poor but worse than any other generations in physiological wellness. The net result of these paradoxes in the life of millennials has been a reversal of their happiness as compared to baby boomers.

In Part-III and final section of book which covers how this understanding and deep empathy about the life of millennials can be used to engage them at workplace, marketplace and in the society to create an effective sustainable organization.

This book is valuable for academia and business alike. It is recommended to be read and internalized by senior and middle managers of every business enterprise that are looking to positively engage with the millennial generation. A must read for everyone, including millennials themselves.

Anupam Narula

Associate Professor, FORE School of Management, New Delhi.