Big business fights back in the battle for millennial talent

By Andrew Hill

For business, the label “big” is like a target. Big Tech, Big Finance, Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Food and the Big Four accountancy firms are in the sights of regulators and campaigners.
No wonder millennials are said to favour the freedom and autonomy of entrepreneurship and self-employment over the draw of full-time roles at consultancies and investment banks.
To counter that temptation, big companies are bending themselves out of shape to behave like smaller enterprises. They are encouraging individual teams to take more decisions closer to the frontline. Agile management is all the rage. Head offices are either disappearing altogether or morphing into shared working spaces. Gigantic global groups hide behind individual labels that the customer associates with artisanship and local production rather than multinational mass manufacture. Think of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, part of Unilever, or the many craft beers, such as London’s Camden Town Brewery, that are in fact part of brewing behemoth AB InBev.
The truth is that many millennials end up at big companies. A 2016 survey by the US think-tank the Economic Innovation Group and EY found nearly two-thirds of American millennials had considered starting their own business, but only just over a fifth believed entrepreneurship was the best way to advance their career. In fact, 44 per cent thought staying with one company and working their way up the ladder — like their parents may have done — was the preferable route.