The Millennial's: Are we ready for the Millennial wave?

What does it mean?

A person reaching young adulthood in the early 21st century!

Much of today's workforce is made up of millennial's, and the amount is growing! The millennial generation is the largest age group to emerge since the baby boom generation, and as this group grows significantly as a proportion of the workforce over the next 5 to 10 years, employers will need to make major adjustments in their engagement models. It's crucial we look at how we attract? How we engage and how we retain talent.

Millennial's have a drastically different outlook on what they expect from their employment experience. They are well educated, skilled in technology, very self-confident, able to multi-task, and have plenty of energy. They have high expectations for themselves, and prefer to work in teams, rather than as individuals. They seek challenges, yet work life balance is of utmost importance to them.

Ultimately millennial's are creating a change in how work gets done, as they work more in teams and use more technology. They where born with technology and are not accustomed to life without the internet or heaven forbid dial up! Coupled with the socially minded millennial comes their desire to be creative. Millennial's have grown up in a time where information has become available instantly. Through a Wikipedia search, answers to even quite complicated questions can be found. As such, millennial's have developed into a group that wants to work on new and tough problems, and ones that require creative solutions.

The millennial employee is interested in feedback on his or her performance. But traditional semi-annual reviews are too infrequent for millennial's. They want to know that they’ve done a good job, and they want to know now.

Within any organisations creating engagement strategies is one of management’s big goals. But managers who have developed successful strategies for retaining "boomers" are going to have put those strategies in the corporate bins!! Creating strategies to engage millennial's requires a whole different approach strategy and planning.

Since agile working is more accessible today, many employees find themselves always connected to their work email or available for business calls. Establishing a positive company culture, one that encourages work-life balance and flexibility, will help millennial's feel less pressured to meet these societal standards. For many millennial's, a job is not just a salary – it's a lifestyle. More workers are channelling their passions at work, focusing on emotional rewards rather than monetary incentives.

Organisations will be better positioned to engage and retain their workers simply by committing to understanding engagement drivers within their companies and by recognising differences across generations of employees. For team leaders, the above should spark important questions as they reflect on their own engagement strategies.

And I suppose the big question is...Are baby boomers and millennial's still considered one and the same when it comes to engagement?

"Organisations that can't - or won't customise training, career paths, incentives and work responsibilities need a wake up call" - Carolyn A.Martin and Bruce Tulgan from "Managing Generation Y"