Mentors wanted. Only millennials need apply

Junior office workers once had a fairly predictable set of daily tasks. Write the sales memo. Build the PowerPoint. Make the coffee. Now, many young professionals have a new mandate: Drag the boss into the 21st century.

While businesses chase evanescent market trends and grapple with a fast-moving future, millennial mentors, as many companies call them, have emerged as a hot accessory for executives. Young workers, some just out of college, are being pulled into formal corporate programmes to give advice to the top ranks of their companies.

Millennial mentorship programmes represent a formalised, mildly absurdist version of the advice junior workers have been giving their older colleagues for ages. Some executives want the views of young people on catering to new markets and developing new products, while others seek glorified tech support — Snapchat 101, Twitter etc.

These programmes are not just a departure from the business world’s traditional top-down management style. They are also a sign of just how perplexed some executives are by the young people in their midst. Companies like Mastercard, Cisco Systems and Mars have experimented with these mentoring programmes. Inga Beale, 54, the chief executive of the insurance marketplace Lloyd’s of London, has said that her junior mentor, who is 19, has a “totally different perspective” and leaves her “inspired.” Melanie Whelan, 40, the chief executive of SoulCycle, holds monthly meetings with her younger mentor, whom she has credited with helping her get “hip with what the kids are doing.”

Could these executives just ask their children for tech tips? Sure. But workplace programmes allow executives to peer into the future of their industry and bond with a junior colleague simultaneously, with minimal embarrassment.

Reverse mentoring — another name companies give to younger people training older workers — is not a new concept. Jack Welch, while the chief executive of General Electric in the 1990s, required 500 of his top managers to pair up with junior workers to learn how to use the internet. But executives are especially eager to learn from millennials, whose dominance in Silicon Valley has given older workers a fear of obsolescence.