Three things millennial workers crave from the workplace

Vision sharing.? Culture.? Access to leadership/ideation groups.

With these three things comes purpose, connectedness, and humanness.? All necessary elements for transforming the workplace as millennials seek to leverage the power of identity, impact, and initiative to relate their values with their work.

Vision sharing

Companies that share their vision, from leadership to the front-line employee, will unite their entire workforce towards a common purpose.? Companies that refine their vision, from the front-line employee to leadership, will engage their workforce and empower their workers to transform and elevate that common purpose, as well as their individual purposes in life.

When a top-down approach to vision sharing is matched with feedback and refinement from the bottom-up, companies can leverage their employees’ creativity, values, and personhood to further develop their employees and improve intraorganizational activities. ?When companies engage millennials, millennials respond by embracing their full selves and fostering new ideas that lead to tangible business outcomes through internal initiatives and customer-oriented service.

Culture

Holistic vision sharing allows millennials to bring their authentic selves in identifying and enhancing a common purpose at work.? Similarly, a holistic approach to culture allows millennials to bring their authentic selves to all other elements of their jobs.??

Just like the integration of a top-down and bottom-up approach benefits vision sharing, a top-down and bottom-up approach to company culture allows millennials to signal necessary changes and adaptations that their respective companies need to take into account as they respond to external changes in consumer preferences and social influences.

Cultures oriented towards transparency, integrity, and customer-centricity will always be relevant and necessary; however, millennials can help shape the cultural expressions that both accommodate shifting consumer preferences and better align company actions with company values.

Access to leadership/ideation groups

Especially on social media, millennials enjoy expressing their opinions and engaging others in thoughtful exchanges.

When companies open up communication channels between leadership and employees, millennials feel more empowered to provide their own insights and ideas to leadership.? Consequently, leaders can keep a better pulse on millennials and leverage their insights to better manage employees and target their marketplace.

Additionally, when companies provide opportunities for millennials to join internal initiatives, they can better engage millennials and reinforce a common purpose amongst millennials and other employees.? Many companies offer employee resource groups, outreach groups, and pure ideation groups (i.e. a team of people that drafts a best practices charter for a particular practice or department).??

Millennials can contribute their ideas and perspective to ideation groups, and the company at large can benefit from millennials’ actionable insights and engagement.? In fact, many ideation groups form organically as a byproduct of workers’ engagement and sense of buy-in, which need to be cultivated by establishing clear communication channels and valuing the importance of empowerment.

With access to leadership/ideation groups, you have a three-step formula for success: 1) millennials can constructively direct their ideas, 2) companies can act on these ideas, and 3)?all employees can reap the benefits.

Vision sharing.? Culture.? Access to leadership/ideation groups.

With these three things comes purpose, connectedness, and humanness.? All necessary elements for transforming the workplace as millennials seek to leverage the power of identity, impact, and initiative to relate their values with their work environment.

Companies, millennials, and other employees can all benefit from aligning on and emphasizing these three things.

In fact, these three things don’t apply only to millennials – non-millennial employees can similarly benefit from and engage in vision sharing, culture, and access to leadership/ideation groups.

People are people.? Don’t get distracted by labels.

Utilize vision sharing, culture, and access to leadership/ideation groups to propel your company forward, no matter if you’re a leader in the company, a recently employed millennial, or a tenured professional.

Happy implementing!