Editorial

T. Johnson (GB), Editorial Committee

No profession is, we suggest, entirely without jargon. It is a kind of shorthand which allows for ease of communication between the members of the profession. Our profession is not immune, for example “adapted to”, “suitable for”, “characterised in that” could be said to be jargon, or “patentese”, the meaning of which we are sure our members explain to their clients. We are prompted to reflect on the topic of jargon as we recently came across another term which to us is jargon, namely “Millennials”.

With apologies to those of our readers well familiar with the term, which seems also to be called the Millennial Generation or Generation Y, we could find no precise date for the start and end of the generation, the general consensus being that it covers birth years ranging from the early 1980s to the late 1990s or early 2000s.

We came across the term in a report on Millennials presented to the recent World Economic Forum. The report, which covered Millennials operating in 29 countries, both developing and developed, showed that two thirds of Millennials expressed a desire to leave their current employers by the end of 2020. The report also shows that Millennials want business to shift its purpose, i.e. to concentrate more on people, products and purpose and less on profits. According to the report too, Millennials also want to have their ‘leadership’ qualities enhanced, and recognised, by employers.

With no pejorative intent towards Millennials, we find these results of the report (which we have summarised) a little disturbing. If it is true for our profession, employers will have to go through repeated extensive and expensive training of new recruits to replace those Millennials who leave if we are to provide an ongoing high quality body of professionals well-equipped to serve the needs of applicants.

Hopefully most of the recruits to our profession are in for the long haul. We are sure too that employers in our profession are well aware of the Millennials problems highlighted in the report and are actively taking steps to engender loyalty in their staff and trainees.

This is the first issue of epi Information in its new electronic guise. We on the Editorial Committee hope that our readers will appreciate and enjoy the new format. The Editorial Committee will continue to try not to lapse into jargon, at least not too often!