Fighting Workplace Fraud in the Age of Millennials
Get the Y Generation involved in your battle to knock out corporate fraud.
A new kind of worker is moving into the workforce, and that’s both good and bad news for employers fighting workplace fraud. As Generation Y (or Millennials) represents a larger portion of the incoming workforce, the corresponding shift in values and attitudes means that employers may need to adopt new approaches to fighting workplace fraud.“They are going to be influencing our world for decades, because they are so big, will have so much spending power, are going to be outnumbering all the other generations,” says Sherry McCourt, a CFE, private investigator, speaker and trainer.“They’re influenced by the things they see around them, the information that you give them. They’re information junkies,” McCourt said in a talk at the ACFE Canadian Fraud Conference in November.The Bad NewsMillennials have been shaped by a world that has included the 9/11 terrorist attacks, powerful hurricanes, devastating tsunamis and reality tv. It’s not surprising, then, that they harbor a certain level of cynicism.A study of 8,000 people carried out by the Josephson Institute in 2009 found that:
…teens are five times — and young adults (18-24) are three times — more likely than those over 40 to hold the cynical belief that lying and cheating are necessary to success. While only about 10% of the respondents over 40 expressed deep cynicism about the viability of honesty, 38% of those 18-24, and 51% of those 17 and under, are in or will soon enter the work world with the belief that lying and cheating are necessary.