The millennial generation consists of more than 80 million young Americans between the ages of 18 and 35. Currently, this encompasses over 35% of the workforce, soon to be 50%!
Leading millennial employees often leaves managers perplexed as to how to motivate, engage, and optimize the performance of this well- educated, tech-savvy, and diverse generation.
In many cases, millennials are not understood and their reputations frequently precede them. Others frequently view them as disloyal, lazy, and disrespectful workers. This creates misperceptions and biases, which influences the way managers work with them.
The keys to successfully engaging the millennial workforce are not much different from past generations – respect the things people care about. Understanding what millennials value and connecting those values to their jobs goes a long way to keeping them engaged, productive, and motivated.
Managers can set up millennials to sail and be productive by building an environment that focuses on the following areas:
- Social Consciousness – support millennials accessing company resources or taking time to help people within their communities who are in need.
- Ambition – develop clear career paths with short and long term rewards and opportunities for recognition.
- Immediacy – provide frequent encouragement and balanced feedback to help millennials know what is expected and understand how they are doing.
- Learning – facilitate multiple learning opportunities for them to develop new skills, via training, coaching, mentoring, on the job learning, etc.