Each generation defines a meaningful work slightly differently. The following are few responses received for an interview conducted by Kelly Pledger Weeks with few employees of each generation (Weeks, Harvard Business Review 2017).
Baby Boomers (born between 1946-1964): “If I didn’t get personal fulfillment and feel like I was doing something good, it would be miserable to put that much time and effort into something.”
Generation X (born between 1965-1983): “If your job is without meaning, what would get you out of bed?”
Millennials (born between 1984-2002): “I would rather make nothing and love going to work every day than make a ton of money and hate going to work every day.”
Going with the salient features or characteristics of each generation, boomers identify their strengths as organizational memory, optimism, and their willingness to work long hours (Giang, 2013). This generation grew up in organizations with large corporate hierarchies, rather than flat management structures and teamwork-based job roles (Gilbert, 2011). Generation X is thinking of accomplishing career goals and work life balance as the key components (Weeks, 2017, Harvard Business Review). In contrast, millennial generation has a different outlook on what they expect from their employment experience. Millennials are well educated, technology savvy, very self-confident, able to multi-task, enthusiastic, have plenty of energy (Giang, 2013) and they believe in having nice co workers, helping others and the community will make their job interesting (Weeks, 2017, Harvard Business Review). They have high expectations for themselves, and prefer to work in teams, rather than as individuals. Millennials seek challenges, yet work life balance is of utmost importance to them (Giang, 2013).
“One of the characteristics of millennials, besides the fact that they are masters of digital communication, is that they are primed to do well by doing good. Almost 70 percent say that giving back and being civically engaged are their highest priorities.” (Buchanon L, 2010, p 166)
As millennial have grown up in an era where information is just a ‘click’ away, they have developed themselves to create a problem and then to find few creative solutions to the same. Hence, they expect themselves to be the X-factor at work for their respective organization. For example, a millennial who had been struggling in her role, admitted to peers that, “I guess I just expected that I would get to act on more of my ideas, and that the higher ups here would have figured out by now that the model’s changing.” (Erickson, Harvard Business Review 2009).This shows that the current generation, ‘The boomers’ have not been successful in recognizing the true values of their following generation, thus failed in engaging Gen Y to the workforce.” (Erickson, Harvard Business Review 2009).
Engaging ‘Millennial’ to the workforce in an effective manner
“Age and stage don’t explain everything, either. If you have multiple Millennial on your team, you’ll realize that neither generation nor age can explain how different the Millennial are from one another” (Davey, 2018 July, Harvard Business Review).
Considering their unique characteristics, Millennial are presented with many challenges as well as opportunities by the management. Therefore, to succeed in driving any company to the next level with Millennial, the organization needs to get the right strategy of engaging them (Gilbert, 2011).As per Mike Johnson’s ‘The new rules of engagement’, engagement now begins with employees’ lifestyles and what they consider is worth investing themselves in; the choice to engage lies with the employee (Smith & Marwick, 2009). Accordingly, here are some top strategies that can be adopted or followed to engage the Millennial.
01. Develop unique connections
As ‘Millennial’ are more often work as a team, they fancy being more interactive between peers and even with the line managers. Therefore, they need to be facilitated to develop such skills and connections by organizing more interactive forums between staff (Gaskel, 2016, Forbes). Sessions on defining the organizational vision and mission too will help (Gilbert, 2011).
02. Flexibility at workplace
‘Millennial’ have grown up in an era where they can reach any information almost instantly. Therefore it is essential to understand their true potential and to give them freedom to ‘think out of the box’ to gain more creative solutions (Reilly, 2014).
03. Training & Development together with Innovations
In any organization, development of employee skills is highly significant to keep in touch with the organizational demand (Gilbert, 2011). Together with training and development, innovation too has become a major focus for many organizations as it is providing the ‘competitive edge’ for most of the firms (SHRM, 2014). Since the new generation is more engaged and savvy in technical aspects, such strategy would make loads of favor for the organization.
04. Continuous Appraisals/Feedback
Millennial always want to feel the work they are engaged in. They want to feel appreciated for the crucial commitment they have contributed towards the organization’s success (Robinson & Gandhi, 2019).
Conclusion
Engagement is a measure where inputs vary in the overall engagement equation across organizations. A company cannot necessarily imitate participation practices or use the participant's variables for success. The work of managers and human resources professionals who are responsible for the engagement is to know that there are generational differences and that the decision-makers in the company's engagement are not always the same as the main competitor. By adopting this approach, executives should initiate discussions in their own organizations to find out which drivers can be tuned to increase engagement and which drivers they need to protect to prevent the engagement from falling across generations.
Millennial are from a new generation who want to do something different. One argument that continues to follow any strategy when experts think about it is that management is still stuck in the past, or that thousands of years remain out of business. As a business, success can only be achieved if the designated goals are meticulously designed and the employees are supported to understand and implement for better performance. Therefore, looking at the brighter side of this millennial cloud is largely important as it can take your business to the next level. The strategies mentioned, will be your drivers to increase the millennial engagement.
