The Future of Project Work: Generation Y’s Motivation

  Education   New Practitioners  

The PMI-funded research project The Future of Project Work: What Motivates Young Professionals to Pursue a Project Career and What Motivates Them to Persist? aimed to identify what motivates young project professionals to work in projects.

The findings show that organizations can motivate young project professionals by providing a transparent career path that enables personal growth and development—and demonstrates how projects act as motivators for them.

Young Project Professionals Want More Than Just a Job
Young professionals are increasingly looking for a specific work environment, characterized by opportunities for learning, meaningfulness and achievement. Projects—with their goal orientation, development and learning opportunities, and visibility of end results—appear to offer the kind of work environment that fits the expectations of young professionals.

While there is agreement that projects are attractive to young professionals, what motivates them to pursue a project career—and to persist—are open questions. With this project, we wanted to gain insights into what motivates them to work in projects, giving us a deeper understanding of the reasons why young project pros enter and pursue a project career (or why they leave it).

A Case Study Approach
To answer these questions, we drew on self-determination theory, which focuses …

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