Engaging Today's Young Employees
Strategies for the Millennials
Young people born between 1980 and 2000 - dubbed Gen Y - are going to be the bulk of the workforce within about a dozen years, filling jobs as Baby Boomers and older employees leave for either full-time or part-time retirement. Raised during a time of relative affluence, accustomed to lots and lots of attention from their Boomer parents, their teachers, and other adults, and accustomed to heaps of praise, the tens of millions of Gen Ys are highly confident about their knowledge, abilities, creativity, and leadership potential.
The problem for employers is that Gen Ys are not slipping into the workplace quietly, but challenging companies' traditional approaches to recruitment and hiring, training and development, engagement and retention. Gen Ys are bringing their values, preferences, beliefs, and technologies to work and expecting employers to adapt. Ys are neither openly pushy nor arrogant, but are nevertheless insistent that work adapt to them. Focus groups we conducted with Gen Y employees reveal key changes Ys would like to make in their companies:
- Less bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is the antithesis of just about everything about life that Y's prefer: ease, speed, minimal conflict, and action. It is a major barrier to Y's expectation for speed in getting work done, getting decisions made, getting technology, and getting ahead.
- More flexibility. The importance of their personal lives is high, and Ys are not as willing to sacrifice their personal time as earlier generations were. Gen Ys expect flexibility in work schedules and locations, most often to improve their work-life balance.
- More personalization. Perhaps a reflection of their experience as the center of their parents' attention, Ys expect to be seen and treated as individuals at work. Employer challenges include understanding young workers to begin with, and respecting their differences and their expectations.
- Better onboarding processes. From the start, they want to understand the company structure, how to get things done, and who to go to with ideas and to get information. They also want opportunities to meet each other early and often in formal and informal settings.
- Improved development and career plans. They expect more rotational development programs, management and leadership training, opportunities to hear from senior staff about their career paths, and regular, informal development discussions with their managers or supervisors.
- More and better communications. Ys expect to be kept informed about business decisions and work processes. They complain when they aren't informed about policy changes or feel "out of the loop."
This Re.sults report examines Gen Y's attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors and discusses how Gen Ys choose employers. It offers recommendations for ways to respond to Gen Y's expectations about work, provides examples of what progressive companies are doing, and explores some of the challenges of managing a multigenerational workforce.