Incenting the Entitled

The Millennial Intrinsic Value: Reward

Millennials value being rewarded. Not unlike other generations, increase in pay, bonuses, and promotions are enthusiastically embraced. However, Millennials also value time off and the opportunity to participate in community or social responsibility projects during company time. They are not high on titles for the sake of having a title or cookie-cutter employee of the month programs. It is safe to say that Millennials value what they value—not what you value! So before you try to reward them, be sure to ask them what they want. Millennials interpret reward and recognition as affirmation. Whether it is an actual trophy, or something that creates a positive memory, the important thing is it has symbolic value to them.

The Bias of Experience

When it comes to the entitled orientation (see Table 6.1), managers cannot help but compare themselves to Millennials. There is a perception among the managers that they did much more for far less when they were entering the workforce. Many commented, “We just didn't have the expectations Millennials do or, if we did, we would never verbalize them.”

A storyline from HBO's Inside the NFL¹ sparked sharp opinion from former National Football League players Dan Marino, Cris Carter, and Cris Collinsworth as they talked about the differences between today's players and those of the era in which they had competed. The story was about a wide receiver who played for the Minnesota Vikings. The player's grandmother died, and he took nine days off to attend the funeral and to tend to his grief. The absence caused him to miss one game. The team fined him one game's paycheck, but the player's council (made up of teammates) approached the team management and advocated for their colleague. As a result, management rescinded the fine.

Cris Collinsworth started the conversation, “Is this league in such a new school place now that we wouldn't even recognize it if we went back to play? What is a player's council? I know what it was when I was playing; we went to Roy Rogers for lunch and complained about Forrest Gregg [his coach], but we would never tell him.” Dan Marino chimed, “It was a dictatorship. Whatever Don Shula said, that was it.” Needless to say, the idea of a player's council was not only a foreign concept to them, it was a symbol of something going wrong. It was interesting that their responses to the subject matter did not begin with the player in question but with their own experience, particularly with their relationship to authority, “We were afraid of our coaches.” Later in the dialogue Cris Carter offers, “I don't believe the younger players have a love for the game.” He talked about his own experience having had his own grandmother die when he was a player. He only took one day off for the funeral and did not miss a game. His coach (Buddy Ryan) even chewed him out for having a bad game. Each of the former players agreed that they would not have taken a game off, because it would have been looked at unfavorably by their respective coaches and they did not want to let their teammates down.

Whatever you think about the conversation, it is a great example of how we compare our own experiences favorably to those of others and use the comparisons as a means for expectation or judgment.

Perhaps you remember the Saturday Night Live sketch “Grumpy Old Man” played by Dana Carvey. He opens the bit with, “I'm old and I'm not happy. Everything today is improved and I don't like it!”

We think you would agree that there is nothing wrong with having expectations. The stress you have has to do with perceived unrealistic expectations on the part of the Millennials. Pandering to twentysomethings' wants without regard for their performance, and offering rewards without desired outcomes, ultimately undermines both their development and your effectiveness. The challenge is rewarding the right things in the right ways.

Here are three keys to incenting Millennials: (1) create incentives that twentysomethings value, (2) clearly and thoroughly state desired outcomes and expectations, and (3) provide timely and fair assessment of their performance.

Rewarding the Right Way

Some incentive programs are destined for failure because they ignore the participation or values of the recipient in the design process. Such attempts are referred to as need-based programs because they depend solely on management guessing correctly what the employee needs or wants. Sometimes they work, but more often than not, they do not work. One Millennial who worked as a trainer at a fitness facility told us, “One of my favorite customers asked me where the nominating forms for the ‘Company Star of the Month’ were. I told him I would break his neck [edited for de-emphasis] if he submitted my name.” The trainer went on to tell us that none of the employees wanted to be the Star of the Month, “All you get is your picture on a plaque and a parking spot that is about the same distance from the building as every other spot. I am a fitness trainer. I don't mind walking.” What do you think he would have preferred?

Victor Vroom wondered the same thing. Reward had to be more than just guesswork. He suggested that people are motivated by how much they want something and how likely they think they are to get it. As a result of his study, he developed expectancy theory. There are three components to his theory: (1) expectancy is the belief that a particular level of effort will lead to a particular level of performance; (2) instrumentality is the expectation that successful performance of the task will lead to the desired outcome; and (3) valence is the value an employee assigns to the possible reward.

One of our clients, a Fortune 500 company, had secured a large contract that had delivery date incentives built in that were quite lucrative. The senior plant manager cast a compelling vision for the project, the sacrifices required, and the payoff that awaited the company. Employees responded by going from two to three shifts and maximizing their efforts. The project was delivered on time and under budget. The company earned the contract bonus. The employees were elated and, in addition to the overtime they had earned, anticipated a generous reward from their company. A celebration meeting was planned, and all employees were invited. Employees eagerly awaited the news of their bonus but discovered the sum of their reward was balloons, cookies, and punch on the plant floor. In dismay, one disappointed worker upset the cookie table and uttered, “I don't want your ^*!$& cookies.” Although our example is extreme, it illustrates the concept of valence. If employees do not value the reward, management will not get the effort or productivity it desires. Sometimes management even gets the opposite.

Rewarding the Right Things

Even if you get the recognition and reward right, incenting still can be a frustrating process for both management and employees. Communicating how one gets recognition and reward can be challenging. In some cases, managers throw up their hands and project their distress onto the Millennials by saying, “They don't appreciate anything. I don't even know why I try” or “Anything nice I do for them, they just expect it.” On the other hand, Millennials say, “Management just tells us stuff to get us to do things, but when we do them, management just says we're not ready.”

One very important aha we experienced in our interviewing process was that Millennials interpret incentives as guarantees. Illustrated in Table 6.2 is the difference between what manager's say and what Millennials hear.

One explanation for what Millennials hear is referred to as selective perception.² It happens when listeners unintentionally filter out some parts of the intended message because it contradicts their beliefs or desires. The more sensitive the communication, the greater the chance of selective perception.

Keeping Them Informed

Successful communication results when the person sending the message and the person receiving the message have a shared understanding of the message. Trust can easily be eroded if there is ambiguity with respect to objectives and expectations. One thing we learned over and over is that Millennials hate ambiguity (see Chapter 12). The importance of clear communication was stressed by one of the managers:

If you think you have communicated what the expectations are and the rewards that will accompany those being met frequently enough, you haven't! They need to hear these things three to four times more often than we think they do. So I have a reminder on my desk that I see every morning that says “Catch your employees doing well and tell them so!”

If you feel that you are not being heard, one easy adaptation is to consider communicating in the medium that your younger workers prefer. If someone drops in on you, drop in on him. If someone calls you, call back. If someone e-mails, e-mail back. If someone texts you…you get the idea.

Keeping them informed means having an ongoing dialogue about what they want, what you believe they need to do, and their progress.

Learning from Our Success

One manager said that the best way to incent Millennials is to give them the space to try different tasks:

I give my staff the opportunity to do some of the things that maybe would enhance their job and that they would enjoy. I think people get restless much more quickly today. They want to be promoted and they've been here a year and “I deserve this” and “I deserve that.” There definitely is a sense of entitlement. I try to set their expectations early on. A lot of it is just continually talking with them. I can't tell you how many times I have heard “I've been here four years and I should be promoted by now.” But without the recognition that we do your job evaluation every year and here are the things you need to work on. When we don't see growth in those areas, why would we promote you just because you've been here four years? We don't say it like that, obviously.

The key is that she manages the expectations of the Millennial with concrete objectives that are communicated frequently, clearly, and evaluated in a way that is constructive.

One manager, the owner of a golf supply store, reported to us that he was unhappy with his twentysomething employees. They would just stand around the store socializing when they were not helping customers, as if their time was their own. He was frustrated with their lack of attention to detail, “I don't want to have to tell them to straighten the merchandise, clean the counters, and stuff like that.” He began to attribute their behavior to character. We suggested that his employees needed to know what he expected of them, the reason why he expected such behavior, and how they would be rewarded for their performance. At first he was resistant, exclaiming, “They should already know this, and isn't a paycheck enough?”

Rather than write off the employees, the manager decided to take our advice. He stressed the fact that customers expected a neat and clean environment in which to shop. He explained that by keeping the store clean and using their nonbusy times to fix displays, restock, and straighten up the store, they were helping him to manage overtime costs. Next, he set aside a portion of the store's profits to be used for year-end bonuses and created a monthly appreciation where he would recognize and reward excellent work by taking them out golfing. He still has to remind the employees to do the “little things” he wants done around the store, which continues to frustrate him, but the manager reports that his frustration level is much lower and that his twentysomething employees are putting in a sincere effort to meet his expectations.

The key to this manager's incenting approach is that he applied both incremental and long-term rewards tied to things his Millennials valued. He made every effort to make incentives unique, memorable, and tailored to the personalities of his twentysomething employees. The result is that his employees work harder for him, and he is happier with their performance.

There are many different ways to incentivize employee motivation. In their book The Management Bible, Bob Nelson and Peter Economy suggest that employees are most highly motivated when their managers provide them with:³

• Praise—personal, written, electronic, and public
• Support and involvement
• Autonomy and authority
• Flexible working hours
• Learning and development opportunities
• Manager availability and time

In a Nutshell

It can be energizing, if not fun, to pull Millennials into the design aspect of incentive programs. It is one way to know that you are incenting the right way. Another valid reason is, “People tend to support what they help to create.”⁴

The entitlement attitude can be successfully addressed in three ways: (1) creating incentives that Millennials value, (2) clearly and thoroughly stating expected outcomes, and (3) constructively assessing developmental progress on a regular basis.