CHAPTER 6

WHAT MILLENNIALS WANT, AND HOW TO GIVE IT TO THEM … WITHOUT GOING BANKRUPT OR ANGERING OLDER EMPLOYEES

While the details of how Millennials live their lives are different everywhere—what language they speak, how spicy their food is, which side of the street they drive on, how likely they are to live with their parents—Millennials are remarkably similar around the world. They like their jobs and their organizations, and they largely want the same things: an interesting, high-paying, stable job and working with people they like, trust, and feel appreciated by, in organizations that are socially responsible and value them enough to provide flexibility and opportunities for growth and promotion.

The organizations we work with have three primary goals for their talent management strategies for Millennials: attraction, engagement, and retention. They want to bring in the right Millennials and keep them engaged and committed to the organization. The three dimensions that help you achieve these objectives (see Model 6.1) are

•  The people (friends and mentors, team, and boss)

•  The work (interesting, meaningful, and balanced)

•  Opportunities (feedback and communication, development, and pay)

MODEL 6.1: Talent Management Strategy for Millennials

If you are particularly interested in attraction, engagement, or retention, you may be wondering if some of the dimensions are more important than others. The academic answer is “it depends,” but the practical implications are simple: all of the dimensions are important for getting Millennials to work for you and be engaged and hardworking. The dimensions are mutually supportive and build on each other. We discuss each one in turn, followed by specific recommendations for actions you can take.

Commitment, Not Loyalty

Commitment is the foundation of healthy employment relationships. People talk about loyalty, but typically in terms of “Whatever happened to employee loyalty? Where did it go?” Employee loyalty may have made sense in the past when the company man gave everything to the organization and received a long, stable (if not always rewarding) career in return. Yet that reality, if it ever really was the norm, ceased to exist in most places at least 30 years ago. Today, people believe they should be just as loyal to their organization as the organization is to them. And generally, they don’t believe that organizations are loyal to their employees.

Therefore, it is more productive to talk about commitment, which is critical to employee productivity but doesn’t imply that the employee will put the organization’s needs ahead of his or her own.

The good news is that Millennials can demonstrate high degrees of commitment to the organizations that employ them. They can be strongly motivated to contribute and actually like the organization they are working for. They can be committed to do what it takes to help the organization succeed, if they are engaged the right way.

Organizations that provide the working conditions Millennials crave will benefit from a generation that is willing to work hard and stay long term. While Millennials may not be traditionally loyal, in the sense of staying with an organization no matter what, most Millennials would prefer to work for an organization for a long time. They will happily plan on spending a large part—or even all—of their career in one organization if the conditions are right. How do you make sure they keep working hard for you and not for someone else? For answers, read on.

The People: Friends, Mentors, Team, and Boss

The community Millennials have at work is critical to their workplace experience. If they don’t feel they have people they care about and who care about them, they are more likely to want to go elsewhere so they can develop those relationships. Most working professionals, managers, and executives spend more of their waking hours engaged with work (including commuting time) than they do at home during the week. That is also true for people in support roles, who usually work “only” eight hours a day. Millennials don’t think their relationships at work are more important than their family relationships, but if they’re going to spend so much time with the people they work with, they want those work relationships to matter. Organizations need to structure the workplace environment so Millennials can develop friendships with coworkers and have positive relationships with mentors, team members, and their boss.

Friends at Work

Friendships at work can be very important to Millennials. Among other benefits, having a good friend at work gives them an outlet for releasing stress when they need to blow off steam. It also indicates that they have a real connection to another person at work and, therefore, are likely to feel connected with the larger community within the organization. Millennials will respond well if your workplace provides opportunities for them to make friends at work and feel part of a community within their organization, beyond the people they work with on a daily basis.

Actions to Take

•  Create the conditions for friendships to flourish. You can’t force people to make friends with others at work; all you can do is provide a conducive environment. Think of it like trying to grow a plant: you can plant it and provide it with what you think it needs (soil pH, water, light, fertilizer, etc.), but it won’t necessarily grow, and you don’t always know why. All an organization can do is to provide opportunities for people to meet, get to know each other, and engage in activities together. For example, sports teams, interest groups, and clubs are ways people with similar interests can get to know each other and perhaps become friends. If you focus on creating an environment where people feel comfortable being themselves, where they are not penalized for socializing on the job (as long as they get the work done), then people will feel more relaxed and welcome at work. That in turn creates a foundation for the formation of friendships, if the right combinations of people encounter each other. It’s that last crucial part that you can’t control.

•  Support community building at work. Help create a community at work, and involve the Millennials in the design and delivery of community-building activities. For example, one company we know of created councils with representatives from both the younger and older generations. The councils provided forums for airing issues and addressing both work-related and social topics such as how to resolve conflict on the job and where to go for advice on key topics. The councils also took responsibility for designing and delivering community-building activities at work such as social outings for employees and their families, celebrations of holidays and key events at work, and after-hours socializing.

Mentors

Millennials want mentors and generally like them when they have access to them. At their best, mentors are like extended family members who look out for Millennials, helping them avoid making mistakes on the job and with their careers. Millennials appreciate the special connections and insights mentors can provide and welcome their help as long as it’s offered in a constructive manner.

Actions to Take

•  Set up formal mentoring programs. Mentor relationships can be critical for Millennials, but not all of them will find mentors on their own. Formal mentoring programs may lack the spontaneity and informal nature that some mentoring relationships have, but having something is definitely better than having nothing. Give Millennials the option of trying different mentors until they find the right one.

•  Encourage people to take on mentees outside of formal programs. In addition to formal programs, strongly encourage all of your leaders to take on mentees and to look for those not being advised by anyone.

•  Educate managers on promoting diversity and taking on mentees who are different from themselves. People gravitate toward developing relationships, including mentoring relationships at work, with people similar to themselves. When there are demographic differences between the people with more experience in higher-level roles and Millennials in lower-level roles, those differences can lead to disparities in who has a mentor and who does not. For example, in organizations where men dominate management positions, women typically have more difficulty finding mentors. The same challenge exists for any ethnic or racial group not well represented in management ranks. For those at a mentoring disadvantage, formal mentor programs may provide the mentoring they need. But just as important is educating your managers on the importance of promoting diversity, including their role in reaching out and helping to develop those who are different from themselves.

The Team

The team Millennials work with is incredibly important to them. These are the people who form their most immediate community at work and with whom they spend the most time. They are the ones who, more than any others, can make or break Millennials’ ability to get their jobs done right.

While for many organizations teams are the primary work unit and are responsible for most organizational performance, HR systems and performance management processes often reward the individual, not the team. This sends mixed messages to Millennials: the organization needs the team to perform well but focuses more on the employees as individuals than on the team.

The good news is that Millennials prefer working in teams. They want a connection with their team, will go out of their way to help team members, and expect everyone to pitch in when there are deadlines. Millennials are happy to take the approach of “we’re all in this together,” but they need their teammates, bosses, and the organization as a whole to do the same thing.

Actions to Take

•  Set the stage and get out of the way. Many effective teams are self-led. This does not mean zero supervision from outside the team. But it does mean that the leaders the team members report to need to create the conditions for the team to succeed, step in to help realign it as necessary, and get out of the way so the team can solve problems and resolve conflicts on its own as much as possible. Millennials, who crave both independence and appropriate guidance, are well oriented to work under these conditions.

•  Improve team alignment. One important factor contributing to effective teams is alignment among all the team members: Do they have a shared understanding of the team’s objectives and how they are supposed to be accomplished? If this shared understanding is in place, then the team won’t spend countless hours clarifying their goals and work processes. Common approaches to achieving alignment include gathering all team members together at the start of a project, or when new members are introduced, to make sure everyone knows each other and agrees on the team’s objectives and plans to achieve them. Getting everyone together face-to-face may be impractical for geographically dispersed teams, but members can still convene virtually via conference calls, webinars, and videoconference sessions.

•  Improve team trust and support. Trust among team members is a key benchmark of an effective team. You can’t manufacture trust, but it absolutely is something to be nurtured. Do Millennials and their teammates feel like everyone else on the team can be trusted to do their work? Do they step in and help each other out to ensure deadlines are met? Team leaders and members need to be on the lookout for unproductive friction in group dynamics and work to help smooth it out early before it has a chance to fester and render the team dysfunctional. Depending on the issue, solutions can range from talking to a team member quietly on the side, sitting conflicting members down together to address the issue, or bringing the whole group together for problem solving. If trust and support behaviors are not in place, help the team figure out where things are not working well and devise ways to improve the situation.

•  Provide the resources the team needs to succeed. An underresourced team cannot function to the best of its abilities. Cost-cutting without an assessment of its negative impact on team performance can lead to lower costs in the short term but hurt much more down the line when teams can’t deliver. Recall that Millennials don’t automatically trust the organization and authority figures to do the right thing, and they want to belong to an organization that provides them with adequate resources. When Millennials see managers ensuring their teams get the resources they need, it sends an important signal that their work as team members is valued as well.

•  Hold everyone on the team both individually and jointly accountable for results. Teams have to be held collectively accountable for their performance. Traditional performance management approaches tend to focus on individual contributions with little to no validation that those contributions helped the team succeed. Team-based evaluation and rewards are needed to ensure a complementary focus on the ultimate outcomes that matter. Rewards can and should have both individual and team-based components. Even if only a relatively small amount of pay is based on the team’s performance, the signal that the group’s output matters for evaluation and rewards is critical in and of itself.

Bosses

Millennials’ managers have the greatest power to impact Millennials’ experiences at work. It is commonly said that people don’t leave organizations, they leave their bosses. This is just as true for today’s Millennials as it was for Gen Xers and Baby Boomers. And it is just as true in New York as it is in New Delhi.

Managers are the focal point for the overwhelming majority of experiences an employee has, so managers need to keep in mind the powerful impact they have on their direct reports. For example, consider a developmental opportunity that is supposed to be available to all employees, such as taking on a special assignment to work with customers. A manager might not want one of her direct reports to take the special assignment. Perhaps she is worried about him finishing his work for her team on time if he takes it on, or maybe she fears he will ask to transfer out of her group after having exposure to the other part of the business. Though she does not tell him her concerns, her direct report picks up what he believes to be discouraging signals from her and decides not to participate. He is worried about negative repercussions for his performance reviews and chances for promotion. All this happens even though she never says a negative word. She doesn’t realize the signals she’s sending and how her direct report is reacting to them (and he never tells her because he thinks she’s sending the signals on purpose).

Millennials want to have good relationships with their managers. They look to their manager for approval and appreciation. They want to be guided to be successful on the job, and the manager is the primary person to guide them. The manager plays an important role in coaching Millennials, not just telling them what they have done wrong but also showing them how to improve. Showing that you trust them to do their job builds their confidence and commitment to you and the organization. Equally important is showing them that you are trustworthy and will follow through on what they need from you.

Actions to Take

•  Don’t just talk—listen, observe, and make sure Millennials know they are appreciated. Being a manager is a difficult job. Given how much managers have to do, it is often nearly impossible to do all parts of the job well. As a manager, one of the most critical things you can strive to do well is to be appreciative of the people who work for you. While managers have good intentions and typically make an effort to express their appreciation for good work, we find that employees need to be told they are appreciated even more often than they currently hear it.

•  Trust and be trustworthy. Millennials want to trust and to feel comfortable relying on the people they work for. To earn that trust, their managers need to set them up for success and give them room to perform. Managers also need to demonstrate that they are trustworthy by doing what they say they are going to do, being honest, and helping out when they see that their assistance is needed. Providing the support Millennials’ teams need to succeed also builds a strong foundation for Millennials to trust their managers.

•  Set goals and hold Millennials accountable. Goal setting is a very important driver of performance for both Millennials and older generations. When you set ambitious but not overly aggressive goals, the motivation to meet the goals drives high performance. The danger lies in setting goals that are too aggressive, as they can seem unobtainable from the outset and might be demotivating. Giving everyone the same chance to succeed and holding employees accountable for performance sends a strong signal to Millennials that their efforts will be rewarded on par with those of their older colleagues.

•  Provide mentoring and support. People grow faster if they have mentoring and support so they know what to do and have the opportunity to do it. Mentoring is especially important to Millennials in their early career stages because it can help them figure out what type of work they are best suited for.

•  Be authentic. The authenticity of messaging sets an important tone for Millennials’ trust of their manager. A manager who pretends something isn’t true or tries to sweep sensitive or less-than-flattering information under the rug, will not be perceived as honest and trustworthy. Difficult as it may seem, if you can’t be honest with everyone about a sensitive topic, the best response may be no response at all—it certainly beats lying if you want people to trust you.. Or you can acknowledge that there are some issues, the relevant details of which will be revealed at the appropriate time. Whatever approach you choose, the more authentic and honest the messaging, the better people will feel and the more Millennials will trust you.

The Work: Interesting, Meaningful, and Balanced

For Millennials, both what they do and how they do it are critical to their workplace experience. Organizations that want to attract and retain Millennials will need to structure work so that it is interesting and meaningful and enables them to enjoy a balanced life (see Figure 6.2).

Interesting and Stimulating Work

Everyone dislikes boring work, and Millennials are no exception. They are strongly motivated to do good work, but it has to be work that is interesting. Of course, not all work is going to be interesting. But minimizing boring work offers the opportunity to engage Millennials to improve work processes. For example, engaging Millennials in brainstorming and decisions about the work design can push them to understand and accept that there may be no way around the repetitive, dull work that has to get done. As likely as that outcome is, they may also surprise you: they may find process improvements that make everyone’s work more interesting and efficient.

Actions to Take

•  Give Millennials interesting work to do. There is no real substitute for interesting work. If the work is interesting, it doesn’t require a lot of convincing or clever framing by management to make it palatable. Therefore, the most effective approach is to give Millennials work that is actually interesting and will help them learn and grow and become even better contributors to the organization. But that isn’t always possible, so . . .

•  Make sure Millennials are clear on the business reasons for the tasks they are given that they find boring, and show how what they do contributes to the organization’s objectives. This is particularly important for Millennials who have jobs where a large percentage of their time is spent doing routine and monotonous activities. For example, reviewing details for a client’s contract can be tedious, but it is a critical task that is essential for the work to be successful. Also, showing appreciation for the boring and monotonous work employees do can lessen its negative impact on them.

•  Outsource it. Outsourcing is an option to consider when Millennials complain about having too many routine and monotonous work tasks. Outsourcing is not a one-size-fits-all answer: some tasks cannot be shipped off site, and others you want to keep in house because they provide valuable learning opportunities for employees. If you can peel off a few of the more routine and monotonous tasks and outsource them to people who focus on that type of work, the more varied and interesting tasks can be done by your core employees.

•  Encourage Millennials to provide ideas to improve work processes. People who have the opportunity to shape how their work is done take greater ownership and are more engaged with their work. Including Millennials in job design decisions can be threatening to leaders who like to hoard power, but that’s precisely why frontline engagement in problem solving can be so powerful: it breaks down traditional lines of authority and sends a clear message of inclusion and respect to employees at all levels. The ideas can range from small, mundane changes to a large-scale redesign of the job.

Examples of big changes include redesigning the end-to-end process of how work is done in the group, deciding which vendor to select for a large-scale technology implementation, or letting the group determine how performance awards are handed out among team members. Small changes could include setting the time for meetings according to team members’ preferences rather than the leader’s, deciding on a less formal dress code, or letting the group decide who gets to go to certain client meetings. Don’t discount the benefits of small changes. While they may seem less meaningful to leaders, if they remove sources of boredom and frustration, the benefits in terms of increased engagement and job satisfaction can be quite high.

•  Provide opportunities for Millennials to interact with the outside world. A key to keeping Millennials engaged is development, which means offering them new and different types of experiences at work. Provide opportunities for Millennials to engage with the outside world (customers and stakeholders) through assignments in other locations (including overseas, if possible), task forces that enable them to interact with the community, jobs that expose them to different segments of your customer base, and so on. These opportunities are valuable not only because they build employee skills in different ways but also because they help satisfy Millennials’ desire to engage in interesting work.

Make the opportunities available to as many team members as possible, including planned rotations of people into the opportunities, instead of keeping the same people in place because they are doing a great job. The short-term transition costs of bringing in someone new will be worth the longer-term benefits of having more people engage in the work. The result will be a deeper bench of people who can step in to fill those roles in crunch situations, such as when someone leaves unexpectedly.

•  Leverage Millennials’ desire to use the latest technology. Your IT strategy should not be driven by the latest fads adopted by Millennials, but ignoring emerging technologies can pose big risks. Every new generation is more familiar with emerging technologies than the older generations, and Millennials are no different.

Consider the recent history of smartphone adoption at work. In the early stages of smartphones, when the iPhone was really taking off, most corporate IT departments resisted allowing their employees to use their personal smartphones at work for fear of security breaches. Yet once the door was opened to linking iPhones with corporate networks, employees happily started offering up their personal devices so they could enhance their workplace productivity.

Tablets provide another example of how a relatively new technology championed by Millennials is becoming increasingly pervasive as a business tool. Many companies are replacing old devices with tablets that have both greater business functionality and the “wow” factor that attracts and retains Millennials. Your Millennials will be happy to help you pilot and exploit the power of the Next Big Thing to enhance work processes and improve productivity.

Meaningful Work

Millennials are not a monolithic group—not all of them want to change the world, though some clearly do (as some part of every young generation does). Broadly speaking, they want to engage in doing work they feel is meaningful with organizations they believe are good corporate citizens. What precisely that means varies from one Millennial to another, but you can still implement strategies to meet their needs and create win-wins for both them and your organization.

Actions to Take

•  Connect the work the Millennials are doing to positive social outcomes. Just as you try to connect Millennials’ work to the organization’s goals and mission, you can help Millennials understand how their work is connected to outcomes that benefit society in both big and small ways. For example, a tax preparer helps individuals manage their finances. A consultant can help people and work processes become more effective so employees can get home to their families more quickly. A company that provides high-quality consumer products at affordable prices helps families afford things that otherwise would be beyond their reach. An electric utility provides life-sustaining power that enables people to live their lives. And so on. Whatever the company’s mission, the manager should be able to connect the work an individual is doing with a larger purpose, and the larger purpose should have a positive impact on society.

•  Offer company-sponsored volunteering. Company-sponsored volunteering events are relatively easy to do, and they do not have to involve large outlays of cash or paid time off. For example, collecting clothing and bathroom products for homeless shelters can be organized in the office. If you create the opportunity for people to get involved in company-sponsored volunteering, they often will give freely of their own time outside of working hours to support it. Some of the activities should be conducted as time off provided by the organization to show the organization’s sincerity in supporting the community, but not all activities have to be. The people leading the events should be those who have a passion for the cause and who want to get the organization involved primarily for the benefit of the people being served, not because of the PR value. There is nothing wrong with doing a little bit of PR; just don’t do it so much that people think publicity is the primary reason the organization is involved.

•  Do a better job of explaining your organization’s contributions relative to others in the same industry. It may be difficult, but one thing your organization can do is to assess how your business contributes to improved community outcomes, whatever industry you are in. We recognize there are limits to how much your organization can contribute directly to society. The key is not to compare your organization to organizations in other industries whose whole business is structured to do good in one way or another (like emergency room doctors saving lives on a daily basis or firefighters rescuing people from burning buildings).

However, you need to think about how you perform relative to realistic expectations for organizations in your industry, especially relative to your competitors. For example, some automotive companies take a more proactive approach to dealing with reducing energy use even if the ROI hasn’t been established yet, whereas others continue with their historical strategies. We expect the former to be more appealing to Millennials who care about meaningful work. You also can make donations of goods and services to community-based organizations and thus show that you are a socially proactive organization with which Millennials can identify.

Work-Life Balance

Millennials want to have a life as well as to work. If you pile so much work on Millennials’ backs that they feel they have no time to live their lives, they’ll do their best to get out from under the weight—just like the rest of your employees.

Therefore, organizations and managers need to employ options that help promote work-life balance. To start, Millennials want as much control over their work as possible. Letting Millennials control their work could be a bad idea if “control” meant “get to do whatever they want.” But even the most demanding Millennials (well, almost all of them) will admit privately that they really only expect reasonable accommodations.

What constitutes reasonable in this case may be a lot less than you would expect. Reasonable Millennials (almost all we have spoken with around the world) realize that they can’t redesign the whole organization to suit their personal preferences. Yet they also don’t want to be treated like mushrooms (kept in the dark and fed manure). Millennials want to understand the reason for the tasks they are given, make choices about when and where the work is done, and have the chance to influence or even directly make some decisions about the work design.

DILBERT © 2006 Scott Adams. Used by permission of UNIVERSAL U CLICK. All rights reserved.

The sheer volume of work can drive Millennials away as well. Reducing the amount of work can feel like a much harder nut to crack, but it’s just as important as flexibility, and sometimes more so. Figuring out how to reduce the overall workload, and not just spread it out over a longer workday for each individual, can yield much greater returns than flexibility. You may end up spending a little more on headcount and/or consultants and outsourcing services, but you will reap the returns from lower turnover, greater effectiveness, and better knowledge retention.

Actions to Take

•  Don’t require face time for its own sake. Millennials have a strong aversion to putting in face time at work simply because that’s the way it’s always been done. Making people wait around just in case the boss might need them isn’t much better—it may be justified in theory but drives people crazy. If the team is working on a tight deadline and the boss needs people available to check a report in the evening, try to find options such as letting workers go home and come back, or have them agree to be available for a conference call or e-mail exchange in the evening from home.

•  Set up the system so working off site is productive. Moving away from a face time culture to something else can be threatening to managers who are not used to working that way. The key to a successful solution is striking the right balance between work demands and employee preferences.

Extensive research and decades of experience in organizations have established unequivocally the benefits of working in the same place at the same time. Yet research and practice have also shown that working from other locations, including from home, can be just as productive as working in the office—if the right conditions are in place. For example, concentrated individual work on a document or spreadsheet can often be performed just as efficiently away from the office as it can at the office if the necessary technology is available.

The key lies in identifying which work can be done away from the office, making sure everyone understands the timeline and deliverables, and establishing working relationships that function effectively when two people are not working side by side. This can take time and effort to get right, but once it’s done, the up-front investment can pay dividends many times greater for months and even years afterward. Managers need to be educated on the benefits of allowing their people to work away from the office and on ways to do it well. At the same time, Millennials need to be educated on the importance of building relationships through in-person interactions, being in the office when needed, and making sure they are available when they decide to work off site.

•  Allow for flexible careers. Flexible careers can be another critical part of a successful Millennial work-life balance strategy. People go through stages in their lives. People who were able and willing to work long and hard hours at one point in their careers may shift into a period when fewer work demands and slower career progression are preferred.

The old way of looking at careers often came down to all or nothing: either you were on the fast career track or you weren’t, and if you got off it, there was no getting back on. Up or out were the only options. Today more and more companies are realizing that isn’t the most effective approach for keeping the talent they want to retain long term. They find that there are substantial benefits to providing employees the option of pressing the pause button on career advancement. The reason for the pause could be having a child, caring for a sick or elderly family member, or just wanting to slow down and smell the roses for a few years.

Whatever the individual motivation, providing flexible career options sends a powerful message to Millennials that you want them to think about working with your organization for a long time, through both thick and thin.

•  Smooth out spikes in the workload. A lot of work ebbs and flows throughout the year in predictable patterns. Some seasonality is driven by consumer patterns such as holiday shopping sales and products that are better suited for warm versus cold weather. Other ebbs and flows are tied to key events such as annual meetings, quarterly financial reporting, and so on. Organizations often fall into a pattern of not anticipating these shifts and having to do huge ramp-ups quickly.

While it can feel heroic to put in a lot of effort, work really long days, and just manage to beat the deadline for the report, presentation, or delivery of products, this pattern takes its toll on the employees involved. If the group is led by an adrenaline junkie, the manager may look forward to those times, both for the bonds that are forged with coworkers and the thrill of beating seemingly unbeatable odds. Yet managers who work like this often create unnecessary work for their teams because they neglect to get the work started far enough in advance—and that’s a real problem.

Whenever there are predictable spikes in the time and effort needed to meet key deadlines, a more proactive and prudent approach is to start as much of the work as possible ahead of time (“pulling the work forward” in the calendar). There are limits, of course, to how much work can be pulled forward. But doing so yields two very positive benefits: (1) a strong signal that you care about the team members’ level of stress and are actively working to relieve it; and (2) a reduction in workload during the peak period (which will be appreciated). Even if it’s just the difference between working, say, 50 versus 55 hours per week during crunch time, that small reduction in hours is felt by everyone and can make the difference for those who are most stressed and closest to walking out the door.

Opportunities: Feedback and Communication, Development, and Pay

For Millennials, feedback and communication, development, and pay are all critical to their workplace experience. If they don’t get enough feedback, they don’t know how they’re doing, and they start to wonder if anyone is noticing their good work. If they don’t get enough development, they start to worry that they are stagnating and won’t be competitive in the job market (something they are always concerned about). If they don’t get paid enough, they worry about bills and debts and the long-term consequences of their current pay level. Organizations that want to attract and retain Millennials need to make sure to provide them with enough feedback, development, and compensation for them to feel they are continuing to progress even as they stay with the same organization (see Figure 6.3).

Feedback and Communication

Millennials want to know what they need to do to be successful. At the same time, Millennials don’t want to be micromanaged (who does?). So remember to approach them with guidance and coaching, not command-and-control dictates.

Millennials are very open to offering their opinions and are often willing to say what they think to people above them in the hierarchy. Rather than view this as a negative, embrace it for the benefits it can provide your organization. Having people who want to contribute is good; their actions just have to be channeled properly.

The good news is that Millennials want their opinions to be received in the right way. They believe there should be a clear chain of command. Even though they don’t always trust authority, they are willing to follow it. But they need the appropriate outlets to make sure their voices and suggestions are heard. When you provide those, and show them you listen, that helps to build trust and ensure they will continue to speak up in appropriate ways. Appreciate their willingness to speak up, and encourage their desire to contribute.

Actions to Take

•  Coach and guide; don’t tear down and order. It should go without saying that Millennials (and people in general) handle constructive criticism much better than negative feedback. Yet managers often fall into patterns of being overly critical without providing useful advice on how to improve. Providing criticism that is constructive and the employee can act on is particularly important for Millennials who are sensitive to being micromanaged and told what to do in unconstructive ways. Typically, people don’t deliberately do a task poorly. Often, they honestly don’t see the difference between what you want and what they have done. While it is important to point out when work is deficient and things could be done better, make sure that you coach Millennials on how they can improve. Part of a manager’s job is to help his or her employees learn to see the difference and perform at a higher level.

•  Provide feedback as a normal part of the workflow, not as an annual event. Formal performance management processes ensure that feedback typically occurs at least once a year. But it shouldn’t be only once a year—that is way too infrequent to help Millennials improve. Feedback of one form or another should happen at least every week or as frequently as work is delivered. Feedback that has an effect (rather than just being pro forma) should be based on the work itself and the person’s need for information about how he or she is doing and how to improve. This is one of the most important activities a manager engages in, and yet it is typically not done often enough—especially for Millennials.

•  Everyone listens; everyone speaks. Two-way communication is important. Sometimes people at the bottom feel that people at the top always talk and don’t listen. Managers believe that if they say “my door is always open” or “you can come talk to me any time,” they’ve done enough to encourage employees to be open with them. It isn’t enough. Be specific about the communication. Follow up to understand how the message was heard and interpreted. It is critical for Millennials (and for everyone else) that people at all levels of the organization feel they have a chance to speak, and that both they and others also listen. From the top down, talking should include sharing strategy, vision, and key information in a timely fashion. For the top, listening means providing lower-level employees with opportunities to make suggestions and provide their perspective, as well as hearing and responding to what the frontline employees say.

•  Help Millennials learn how to speak their truth, constructively. Closely related to the issue of two-way communication is helping Millennials feel empowered to say what they think. If Millennials don’t feel their voices are being heard, or if they feel that they are frequently being disregarded, they will find other ways to be heard such as publicly tweeting their thoughts or sharing them on social media sites. Such avenues for expression may end up being substantially more disruptive to the organization and harmful to Millennials’ careers.

If you provide them with effective channels for contributing their input in a meaningful way, you can ensure productive communications that keep Millennials engaged and not stigmatized for challenging authority disrespectfully. For example, when thinking about how to improve their work, invite Millennials (and their older colleagues) to make suggestions about what could be improved—and then make sure you follow through on making the changes they recommend that are reasonable and add value. If you don’t accept or implement their ideas, explain why or offer to discuss it with them.

However, make sure that you put forth for consideration only aspects of the work where the organization is ready and willing to make a change. Any aspects of the work that are viewed as immutable and not candidates for change should be excluded entirely from the process, and you should explain why they can’t be included.

•  Have important career-related conversations with Millennials in person. While using social networking sites is fine for socializing and even for some work-related communication, all important career-related communications with Millennials should be done in person. Given restrictions on travel budgets, it may be difficult for managers of Millennials who are working in other locations to have all important conversations face-to-face. Even when this is the case, managers should make every effort to have substantive conversations in person to develop the relationship as much as possible.

•  Help Millennials learn to have conversations others consider to be important in person. While Millennials want conversations they consider important to them to be held in person, they don’t always prioritize in the same way how they convey information others consider important. Managers need to help Millennials learn that they should use face-to-face communication for information others consider important, rather than whatever is most expedient for them. Given restrictions on travel budgets and the impracticality of meeting people in person who work far away, it’s natural to default frequently to something other than face-to-face for many business communications. Millennials may need guidance in some situations to strike a good balance among electronic, telephone, and in-person communications, thinking about what best serves the needs of the receiver of the communication, not necessarily the preference of the Millennial.

Career Development

Millennials want to develop and move up within their organizations. Learning and growing are important to Millennials because they know they have to keep developing more skills to remain employable. But development is about much more than just keeping themselves gainfully employed or improving their chance of promotion. The learning that takes place makes the work more interesting, regardless of whether the learning is due to a carefully scripted development plan or just the normal exposure to new experiences on the job. And more interesting work makes the job more attractive to Millennials.

Provide Millennials with good development opportunities, or be prepared for them to go elsewhere to find them. Encourage their learning, development, and desire to rise within the organization. Help them develop, because everyone benefits when Millennials get development—Millennials, their managers, and the organization.

Actions to Take

•  Help Millennials realize that they’ll learn the most on the job. Once people start working, most development happens on the job, not by sitting in a classroom, watching a video, or taking an online training course. People who are recently out of school (as many Millennials are) may still believe that they need to be in a class to learn and that they need to demonstrate performance on a test so people will know that they’ve learned. Help Millennials understand that what they learn is for them to improve their careers, and that most of the time the only test they’ll have is how they perform every day, day in and day out. Therefore, they are responsible for figuring out what they need to learn and whether they’ve learned enough. All everyone else sees is performance.

•  Have a plan for developing Millennials on the job. Helping Millennials to establish appropriate career expectations through formal development planning is the first step. Following through on those plans is the second, which requires coordination among the Millennial, the boss, and the organization.

As a manager, you may want your people to take charge of their own careers, but not all of the people reporting to you know what opportunities are available. Equally important, not all of them may be able to choose the opportunities that will have the greatest benefit for them and the organization; they may need your help to understand if they are a good match for a particular opportunity.

Don’t mistake being quiet for lack of interest or desire to be developed. Some people are less assertive about speaking up for themselves. Make sure they get the necessary attention, not just their more outspoken colleagues. Take the lead, and engage Millennials in conversations about development options and career directions.

•  Don’t ignore the B players. A professional friend of ours once remarked that organizations spend so much time focusing on the A players that sometimes they ignore the Bs. This spot-on observation highlights a fact that needs to be corrected: most organizations spend too much time and energy worrying about their stars and don’t spend enough time on the ones who haven’t yet emerged as stars—or who never will.

For all the value that the A players provide, they are a relatively small number. The much larger group of good performers is responsible for the vast majority of the work and deliverables that keep your organization running and your customers happy. Frequently the B players do not receive enough attention, leaving many of them frustrated with their lack of access to plum assignments and fast-track career paths. Millennials are earlier in their careers, and therefore you may find a lot of them in the B player group. Anything you can do to pay more attention to and develop your B players will directly help in retaining Millennials as well.

•  Make it clear that development is about growing in position as much as it is about moving on to the next promotion. Even though many Millennials like to learn for the sake of learning, some are more focused on advancing in their careers than others. Remind these Millennials of the benefits of slowing down and focusing on learning as much as possible in their current roles.

If a Millennial finds himself or herself assigned a task he or she thinks is too easy, the employee should be challenged to see how strong a performance can be given in that position, while at the same time learning as much as possible. Think of it as increasing the level of difficulty, pushing Millennials to perform at a higher level. The challenge is how well can they do?

You can remind them that the best way to audition for a new, higher position is to outperform in their current role—and the more they outperform, the better. Encourage them to coach and mentor their colleagues who aren’t doing as well, and so on. There is typically more employees can do to improve their performance and contribution in their current role.

•  Provide sabbaticals. One way to give your Millennials opportunities to develop is to let them get that development outside of the organization through an employee sabbatical.¹ A number of organizations use sabbaticals to give their employees a chance to take a break from their day-to-day routines, recharge their batteries, and expand their learning and experience through entirely different activities. A sabbatical can be either paid or unpaid, and can range from a few weeks to a number of months. In some cases, the sabbatical is restricted to activities like education or working with charitable organizations, while in others, there are no restrictions.

Sabbaticals typically are limited to people with a minimum numbers of years of tenure, but that does not necessarily make them unattractive to Millennials—and they may help you retain Millennials who want to take advantage of that benefit. While the typical sabbatical appears to be relatively short (no more than two months), if a down cycle or recession hits, you can put temporarily redundant but still highly valued employees on extended unpaid or partially funded sabbaticals (six months or longer). Doing this can keep Millennials engaged and ready to come back to work for you while they benefit from learning and contributing in other venues over an extended period of time.

Pay

Pay today is more transparent than it’s ever been before. In the past, companies tried to keep pay information confidential and many mostly succeeded. Employees only had side conversations in hallways and among friends and family. That era is long gone. Anyone with a computer or smartphone is a few clicks or taps away from publicly posted information on how much jobs like theirs pay—and often how much other people working in the same organization are paid. The question is not whether Millennials will find information about their pay from nontraditional sources; it’s what the sources of that information will be and how accurate they are. The more transparent you can be about your organization’s pay practices, the better.

Millennials are motivated to work and want to be paid well for it. They especially don’t believe they should have to take a pay cut just because their organization might contribute to the community. Pay them what they are worth, and don’t shortchange them.

Millennials have real financial needs. They aren’t just spoiled brats who want more money. They are concerned about paying the bills, reducing debt, and saving for retirement. They struggle with financial issues that affect their job and career choices. So quibbling with them to save a few pennies can backfire really quickly.

Ultimately, how Millennials feel about their pay cannot be separated from what they are being asked to do. If the work demands are reasonable and pay is adequate, everything may be just fine. If the work demands are very high, then pay has to be higher to compensate. But pay alone is not enough. Even if you pay premium compensation rates because you have very high productivity standards, the entire package will be what matters. Do they see a longer-term future working with you? Is there the opportunity for advancement? Are they shown appreciation for their hard work? Do they like their teammates and bosses? Is the work interesting and meaningful? All these factors and more combine to create the full package that dictates how Millennials feel about their pay and about working for you.

Actions to Take

•  Understand that compensation first and foremost pays the bills. Millennials are often dealing with difficult financial situations, so the amount in the pay package matters to them in real, tangible ways. It doesn’t matter if their financial difficulties are due to circumstances beyond their control or choices they made. The reality they face is just that—reality. If they don’t earn enough to pay back student loans, get ahead of their bills, and address their concerns about saving for the future, they will be distracted, have a hard time committing themselves fully at work, and look for someplace else to work that can offer them greater compensation. They may not leave immediately, but the risk of them leaving will be higher than if they are well paid.

•  Understand that compensation is also a measure of value and self-worth. You may have made less money at the same stage in your career. Or you may have made more. You may believe Millennials are paid just fine relative to what they can get elsewhere or relative to other people doing the same jobs who have longer tenure with the organization. But what matters to Millennials is how they feel about their pay, not whether management thinks they are paid fairly.

Pay sends a very powerful signal regarding how the organization feels about Millennials, and it affects how Millennials feel about themselves. Think about how you would feel about yourself if you truly believed that you were seriously underpaid. It would affect your feelings of self-worth. Millennials are no different.

•  You can underpay or overwork, not both. You can underpay people you don’t work very hard, and you can overwork people you pay really well. But you can’t underpay and overwork employees for very long before they’ll decide to go somewhere else. Millennials are willing to work very hard, but they expect to be paid well for it. If they are working very hard, they may feel undervalued even at above-average pay rates, because compensation is really about the total package of work and pay.

•  Seize control of the conversation about pay back from the Internet. Pay transparency is increased by what’s available online, but the quality of the information can be very poor. If you don’t provide information about pay, Millennials will have only what they can find online and from talking with their friends to inform their opinions about their pay. The more information and detail you can provide, the more they will trust what you say, and the less they will rely on (arguably less accurate) online postings.

Be honest with the compensation information you provide. Employees will certainly check what they are told against what can be found online and will be quick to note discrepancies.

•  Pay is about the whole package, not just the amount on the paycheck. For Millennials, compensation isn’t just how much shows up in their pay packets every two or four weeks. It is also about their development, how appreciated they are made to feel through nonmonetary means, how much they are expected to work, how much flexibility they have, whether they see taking less now as paying back over time, and so on. The entire package of workload, stress, long-term outcomes, and pay has to make sense to the Millennials or they will feel a need to look elsewhere for a better deal.

Putting It All Together

This chapter has provided some very specific recommendations on how to engage Millennials in the areas of people, work, and opportunities. If you can do all of them, you will be as successful with Millennials as anyone could ever expect. But maybe you can’t do everything. You have to prioritize based on your organization’s situation and first change the things that you believe will give you the greatest return. With that in mind, we offer some key points that might help you think through how to focus and prioritize.

© Randy Glasbergen, glasbergen.com

1. Millennials will leave if their needs aren’t met.

Make sure that the organization provides Millennials a complete package that addresses their professional and personal needs, one that includes promotion, advancement, workload, development, community, appreciation, and pay. The more complete the package, the greater your chances of not only attracting and retaining them but also of winning their engagement and commitment.

2. Millennials can leave—but they don’t necessarily want to.

Unless they are in a bad situation, most Millennials don’t leave just for the sake of being somewhere else. They leave to escape a bad situation or to level up to a substantially better one. Change is no easier for Millennials than it is for anyone else, and they want to stay if things can work out as they’d like them to.

3. Sharing their values is as much about compensation and interesting work as it is about doing good.

Be a good corporate citizen—but don’t expect them to think it makes up for deficiencies in compensation or opportunities. Millennials want to be part of organizations that are making positive contributions to society in whatever ways they can that are both effective and appropriate for the industry and business model. This is a “both/and” situation. Millennials want to see positive contributions to society from their employer, but not at the expense of what they want and feel they deserve for their compensation and their careers.

4. Recognize and help millennials manage the real financial pressures they are under by providing them with good options.

Acknowledging the pressures and providing ways for Millennials to manage their financial lives will help build their commitment to staying and working hard to help your organization succeed. Many Millennials are operating under strong financial pressures: student debt, mortgage debt, a future with meager or nonexistent pensions, and long-term economic uncertainty. The financial circumstances of members of older generations vary greatly from person to person, even among those working side by side in the same job; the situation for Millennials is no different.

Afterword

As you finish reading this chapter, you may be saying to yourself, Many of the ideas and recommendations you’ve developed based on your studies of Millennials such as pay transparency, feedback, opportunity, and community could apply to employees of any age. You’re right. Employees of all ages benefit when managers and organizations implement the recommendations we’ve discussed.