According to Pew Research Center analysis, more than one-in-three American labour force participants (35%) are Millennials, making them the largest generation in the U.S. labour force. Organizations are developing into majority millennial teams, and predictions show millennials representing nearly 75 percent of the workforce by 2030. So it’s time for C-suite executives to channelize their thoughts around how this shift might impact their business.
With an ever-increasing growth in the composition of millennials in the workforce, understanding their needs and applying strategies for their retention has become quite a challenge. Forbes stated that “91% of millennials don’t anticipate staying at a job for more than three years.”
One of the biggest reasons concerning millennials’ attrition is their lack of engagement in the workplace. According to research by Gallup, only 29% of millennials are engaged in the workplace, indicating that only three in 10 are emotionally and behaviorally connected to their job and organisation. A staggering 87 percent of employees worldwide are disengaged at work affecting productivity and profitability.
Millennials want an engaging work culture where they feel a sense of bonding with the work and seek career satisfaction. A well engaged millennial is always on a constant run to make the best use of respective skills and abilities to strive for organisations development, as well as stay innovative.
Let’s take a step back and look at how present generation millennials are different from the previous:
- Disparate social dynamics and mindsets.
- More technology focused
- Prefer a culture of open collaboration
- More inclined towards better flexibility of work hours
In addition, according to a recent article in Forbes, creating an employee recognition culture can increase employee retention by up to 31%.
Younger talent is the key to an organization’s future. So how can organizations successfully engage millennials?
Here are some effective tips to improve the employee engagement and retention rates among your millennial workforce.
4 Actionable Tips For Millennial Engagement In The Workplace
1. Create A Culture Of Innovation
Attracting best millennials to work in your organization involves a dynamic shift in your work culture. Most of the millennials prefer organizations with flexible, innovative workplace environments where they can be productive and creative to make an impact on business growth.
They find opportunities that are tied to their business or workplace highly rewarding and effective and channelize them to positively impact the world around them.
According to Deloitte’s Third Annual Millennial Study, 80 percent of Millennials view business innovation as positively impacting society and providing a launch pad for new ideas.
Organizations have a need to focus on developing an innovative work culture to bring robust solutions for business challenges. Introducing an idea management software into your workplace offers a creative platform to capture ideas from your employees and streamlines the process of innovation management.
Learn More: What is an idea management software & why your business needs one
Did you know? According to The Deloitte Millennial Survey 2017, Millennials want to work in places where they feel empowered and accountable – where they feel they can make a difference and have an impact.
2.Implement Ongoing Collaborative Training
COMPANIES THAT INVEST IN EMPLOYEE TRAINING ENJOY 24% HIGHER PROFIT MARGIN VERSUS COMPANIES THAT DON’T – HUFFINGTON POST
Retaining millennials calls for continuous training which is both short and collaborative.
68% of workers claim that training and development is the most important company policy – Source (EdenRed).
Keeping them engaged entails the use of collaborative websites, gamification techniques for ideation and simulation of online training.
A survey from Bridge reveals that offering career training and development would keep 86% of millennials from leaving their current position.
Millennials want to be actively learning. Ease of access to on-demand training videos and access to a pool of rich information is far more effective in keeping them engaged.
Delivering training sessions or materials across mediums and devices, along with adaptable learning opportunities can accord to the assurance that their organizations back them up for their professional development and contribute to employee engagement.
Besides, the ROI that millennials bring to the table, because of training, is the skill level enhancement to the entire organization accounting largely to a better business benefit.
3. Modernize Your Intranet
Millennials prefer to work collaboratively in teams because they think working with co-workers is far more productive and beneficial than working alone.
Modern intranets pave a way to evolve and create a gateway to a modern digital workplace. It includes features like employee recognition, mobile-friendliness, chatbots etc. that help in boosting employee engagement.
Organizations are required to build a modern digital workplace with modern features where millennials can engage and collaborate effectively.
Millennials are a social group, and consequently, their social needs are required to be met to keep them engaged with the way of life and their work in the organisation’s culture.
Learn More:Why Modern Intranets Are The Gateway for A Modern Workplace
4. Opportunities For Career Progression
Millennials are more concerned about the quality of work life and have an urge to grow continuously in their professional career.
A PwC’s survey on Millennials at Work: Reshaping the Workplace, found that “opportunities for career progression” was millennials’ top trait in an attractive employer. 91% of Millennials consider the opportunity for accelerated career progression as one of the most important things about their job.
Career growth is the prominent contributor to higher retention levels for this generation.
86% of millennials said that providing career training and development would keep them from leaving their current position.
Including a learning management system can help in furthering a skill gap analysis for employees and prescribe learning materials (both formal and informal) based on the identified skill gap. This can help employees to stay engaged, focused and continually improve their skills.
87% of Millennials rate “professional or career growth and development opportunities” as important to them in a job; 69% of non-millennials agree – Gallup
As the organization offers career growth, millennials stay more loyal to the organization and will have less incentive to jump ship to another employer in the name of career progression.
Conclusion
Engaging and retaining millennials is all about understanding how they think, how they communicate, what’s important to them, and what technologies need to be incorporated into the workspace to support their unique working style.
Millennials are likely to make their voices heard and expect to be listened to. Engage with your employees on a personal level and take the time to listen. Collect feedback and gather insights from your employee base and use this to boost your innovation output.
Consequently, organizations need to adapt and be open to ideas, giving a clear implication that they are tuned in to their customers’ wants. Adapting to the opinions and requirements of a new generation is challenging but necessary, both in terms of maintaining employee loyalty and satisfying their expectations.
Millennials are social animals and they collaborate best on social intranet platforms. Activities like instant messaging, video collaboration are fuelling workplace productivity and have become an integral part of daily work life.
Incorporating an effective digital workplace solution with social collaboration tools can answer the millennial demand for modern, easy-to-use, and high-utility technology — supporting engagement and retention. The need for a digital workplace is primarily to help employees connect, collaborate and communicate seamlessly meeting the needs of millennials and organizations own critical needs for productivity and growth.
Check out Mesh – A digital workplace solution which can bring your enterprise a new digital world, boosting employee engagement, increasing retention and achieve greater organizational efficiency.
If you’d like to learn more about this topic, please feel free to get in touch with one of our experts for a personalized consultation.
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