As more and more millennials enter the workplace, business managers must reconsider their management techniques to ensure successful operations and maintain happy, hard-working employees.
In a Denver Business Journal article titled, “5 ways managers can keep millennials happy and working hard,” contributor Caitlin Hendee discusses how businesses can successfully manage millennials.
“With millennials on track to make up 50 percent of the workforce by the year 2020, employers might have to rethink the old way of doing things if they want to retain and keep that top talent,” writes Hendee.
Moreover, Nigel Dessau, chief marketing officer of Stratus Technologies, explains in the article that millennials are different than previous generations. “Millennials have drastically different career aspirations, attitudes about work and knowledge of technologies,” says Dessau.
Here are five ways businesses can keep millennials on task and happy:
- Don’t confuse your motivations with theirs. Dessau states in the article that if you must be willing to learn the values of millennials if you want to hire and retain this generation. Millennials are often more interested in things such as corporate responsibility than salary.
- Don’t assume they aren’t working if you can’t see them. Be flexible. Dessau notes in the article that this generation often doesn’t work a typical 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. workday.
- Allow some “me-time.” Dessau reports that seven out of 10 millennials expect some “me-time” at work. “That means if they’re using Facebook at work, that’s not a problem,” he says in the article. Part of the attraction to millennials is how connected they are and how good they are with social media.
- Immerse them in your world. You can’t get away with the common saying of “I told you so,” shares Dessau in the article. “That won’t mean anything to them,” he continues in the article. “That’s not what they accept. You have to explain it to them in terms of context and strategy.”
- Give feedback with they need it. Do not just give feedback when you need it. Oftentimes, millennials will want constant feedback on how they are doing.
Read the entire article on managing millennials here.
