MANAGING, MENTORING & WORKING

WITH MILLENNIALS

Management Tips to Bridge Differences6

of corporate recruiters say their organization has a difficult time managing millennials

of executives give millennials low grades for work preparedness

2/3 Millennials are a huge opportunity for companies and yet…

Those statistics are alarming because millennialscomprise a thirdof the workforce

Remember when you were 24?The uncertainty, ambiguity and even anxiety of leaving two decades of school for a whole new life?

Because we had little experience at that age, we also had less baggage; we could enter new situations less jaded and genuinely listened to conversations.

We hadn’t yet bought into what couldn’t be done; this enabled us to move forward but guaranteed we would make mistakes of ignorance.

Millennials are the same – eager to listen and engage, but with vastly different expectations for transparency and tools.

Millennials are used to checking status themselves -anytime, anywhere.

It’s self-service to the extreme.

What’s a good place

to eat nearby?

What has Mary been

up to?

Status update:

“Heading to New York!”

They’re used to communicating instantly and constantly – without meeting, getting on the phone or doing a PowerPoint deck.

They presume transparency and they presume other people are seeing, reading, and reacting to what they communicate.

It’s the push rather than pull model; transparency isn’t a fight, it’s a constant.

of millennialsprefer to work independently and coordinate digitally according to PwC.

70%

Imagine the potential capacity breakthrough for an enterprise: less meetings and reporting but real time transparency.

Unfortunately, most companies are far from that transparency ideal and the means of communicating about work may even appear crazy:

List of what people should do

PPT Dashboards on what they are doing

SharePoint sites with what they’ve half done

Emails on why they can’t do it

Endless status calls to make sure no one has time to do it

Millennials are used to having “an app for that” – getting status and tools themselves, and learning a new tool habit in a heartbeat.

They haven’t yet decided learning new ways of doing things is too hard.

Millennials may also be slightly baffled or resistant to the amount of busywork that surrounds or even equals the amount of meaningful work, which can make managing them difficult… but aren’t we complaining about that too?

This is what millennials most want from organizations reports PwC.

Meaningful work and work/life balance are more important than financial reward.

While some report that this generation is less engaged in their new jobs than prior generations of young people…

Gallup reports that almost 80% of their older colleagues aren’t engaged in their jobs either.

A Deloitte study reports 75% of millennials would actually like their companies to do more to develop future leaders.

and 70% of a young person's learning happens on the job.

Keep the following 6tips in mind to smooth out the differences and engage your young, talented team members.

1. Know when you hire them that you’re signing up to be a leader, mentor, coach, and manager.

2. Communicate goals, share how their work supports the mission, and be transparent.

3. Provide more frequent feedback and positively reinforce work well done to contribute to on-the-job training.

4. Respond to mistakes by providing guidance on expectations, alternative approaches, and logic for different decision making.

Remember you didn’t hire for their experience; you’re helping them build it.

5. Share your lessons learned, subject matter expertise and leadership skills.

Inspire and engage them with both wisdom and kindness.

6. Avoid training them to hide the ball, bogging them down with irrelevant tasks, or expecting them to be effective (or happy) with productivity tools older than they are.

Embrace millennials’ fearlessness as well as the idea of helping them grow.

These are things our workplace and we genuinely need.

Tap your team’s potential.Clear goals, easy collaboration, regular 1on1s and feedback engage and propel your workforce.

Learn more at www.workboard.comRaise your business velocity