Engage them now or lose them forever.
What can you do to create a youth-friendly culture & engage your millennials NOW?
Provide opportunities to contribute to vision and strategy.2
Millennials are mission-driven; six out of ten millennials chose their current employer based on a sense of purpose.3 Millennials choose employers based on mutual values. Millennials also demonstrate their support for companies as consumers and employees based on that sense of purpose. In fact, millennials are 46% more likely to work for a company with values they know and trust.4 Gain millennials’ trust and buy-in by giving your employees the opportunity to contribute to the vision and strategy behind a project, a goal, a product line. Team conversations around values, goal-setting, and strategy go a long way in developing collaboration among teams and increasing employee engagement.
Enlist employees in developing their own goals and career paths at your organization.
Millennials are more likely to feel valued, motivated, and excited to show up for a job that promises development and growth opportunities that align with their ambitions. The perceived opportunity for growth and career development is the number two reason millennials choose an employer.2Millennials are so purpose- and mission-driven that they consider whether to stay or go based on how the job fulfills their aspirations. 71% of millennials say that achieving their goals is an important aspect of meaning and purpose,5 and 45% say they would quit a job if they didn’t see a career path they wanted at the company.3 Furthermore, 63% report a lack of leadership development as their biggest reason for looking to switch employers.1Engage them now by providing opportunities to envision their paths at your organization, and set the goals they need to complete in order to contribute value in the near term.
Focus on the whole employee.
Create growth and development opportunities that are both professional and personal.
Millennials look at work and life as more of an integration than a balance. Millennials cite personal goals and values as the biggest influence on their decision making at work.1 Additionally, millennials say that the encouragement for personal projects is the top contributor to innovation in the workplace.2 Sure, income is a large factor in getting a job for millennials, just as it was for previous generations, but what millennials seek is the opportunity to contribute to their passions and lead innovation while they’re earning that paycheck.2 Employers that offer both professional and personal growth will retain the most millennial talent, which is why it’s so important to connect the personal and the professional in employee development. This includes opportunities to learn from failure. Millennials get a reputation for always needing praise, but they also crave opportunities to learn from failure.2 Provide ample opportunity to reflect on the learning that comes from both accomplishment and failure. Google learned through years of study that this type of learning builds both individual morale and psychological safety among teams, leading to higher performing teams and more engaged employee’s overall.6
Emphasize personal accountability.
Empower employees with the tools to track and report on their own performance, and encourage mentoring and reverse mentoring relationships to ensure the feedback turns into progress2
More than half of millennials report high levels of job satisfaction when they are held accountable for their performance,1 and 71% say that achieving their goals is an important aspect of meaning and purpose.5 Leash all that productive energy by providing tools and support for millennials to track their own progress and reap the benefits. A 2015 study at Dominican University demonstrated that people are more than 70% more likely to accomplish their goals when they write them down and have an accountability system in place to track them.7 Build upon the self-driven goals by utilizing them as part of a mentoring and reverse mentoring program to increase engagement by as much as 66%.8
Engage your millennials now with Best Year Yet®
Best Year Yet® offers a unique opportunity to engage the whole employee. Individuals and teams go through a process that engages them personally and professionally in a reflection on their past performance. It helps them celebrate accomplishments, while also reflecting on disappointments to discover learning that will inform future behaviors. Current results and behaviors are discussed to identify the mindsets that stymie, and the mindsets that inspire. With a new approach, individuals and teams explore values and identify their various professional and personal roles and aspirations to focus in on the most important team or individual goals in those areas for the coming year. From there, Best Year Yet® offers an online and app-based tracking system, as well as ongoing coaching, sustainability, and mentoring support to ensure your employees have the tools they need to engage and succeed.
Click here to download The Millennial Imperative Whitepaper
– Robin Doss, Coach and Facilitator, Best Year Yet
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SOURCES
- “The 2016 Deloitte Millennial Survey: Winning over the next generation of leaders,” Deloitte, May 2016, https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/global/Documents/About-Deloitte/gx-millenial-survey-2016-exec-summary.pdf
- “Global Shapers Annual Survey 2016,” World Economic Forum, 2016, http://shaperssurvey.org/data/report.pdf
- “Unlocking Millennial Talent 2015: Brand New Insights for Employing the Fastest Growing Generation in the Workplace,” 2015, Center for Generational Kinetics, http://genhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Unlocking-Millennial-Talent-c-2015-The-Center-for-Generational-Kinetics.pdf
- “2016 US RepTrak: Millennials and Reputation in the US,” Reputation Institute, May 19, 2015, https://www.reputationinstitute.com/Resources/Registered/PDF-Resources/2016-Millennial-RepTrak.aspx
- “The Other 91%: Myths About Millennials at Work,” Center for Talent Innovation, July 21, 2016, http://www.talentinnovation.org/publication.cfm?publication=1530
- “What Google Learned from its Quest to Build the Perfect Team,” New York Times Magazine, February 25, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html?_r=0
- “Study Focuses on Strategies for Achieving Goals, Resolutions,” Dominican University, May 2015, http://www.dominican.edu/dominicannews/study-highlights-strategies-for-achieving-goals
- Emelo, Randy. Modern Mentoring. ATD Press: 2015, p. 25.