Millennial Generation... What's Your Strategy?
Mar
31
Written by:
3/31/2011 11:16 AM
I recently read an article on www.BusinessWeek.com about motivating the Millennial Generation and found it particularly insightful. At my own organization when we interview for open positions the wide chasm between Generation X and Generation Y is readily apparent. Generation Y has grown up with the world at their fingertips through the internet, email, Facebook, YouTube and other social media applications. Often the restrictions of an office environment is a shock when they realize that they cannot update their Facebook or Twitter all day. Also, from my own experience, they seek positions of experience yet are not as inclined as Generation X to put in the long hours and hard work to get to that lofty position they aspire to.
As I read Vineet Nayar’s strategies, I contrasted them to the ways my own organization has dealt with the influx of younger workers and found we differed in several areas. While we work to empower our young employees we first determine their level of responsibility and accountability, monitoring their work over a period of time.
The human element is crucially important as we build relationships and trust with our employees. We have weekly bbq’s in the summer, run wellness programs through the year as well as other team building activities. The result is not only do the employees get know each other better, they get know their managers better as well, building stronger working relationships.
We put employees first in multiple ways. If they don’t buy into the brand and company mission, it will definitely come through to the customer. We also survey our office yearly to take the pulse of our staff. While we initiate change from the management level, that change is derived directly from the feedback reported by our yearly survey.
Transparency is probably the biggest issue we struggle with internally. It’s often hard to keep the channels of communication open from the sales team down to the customer service department. We’ve rectified some of this through weekly staff meetings and announcing major changes well ahead of time.
As younger workers continue to enter businesses all over the country, it will be interesting to see how each side adapts to meet the other. I know that it’s a work in progress in my organization, but the forward movement has been positive and I continue to learn better ways to on-board and motivate my Generation Y employees. Check out Vineet’s article at here.