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You've Got Millennial Employees All Wrong; Here Are The Four Things You Need To Know Now

This article is more than 8 years old.

Fido Fridays At PayScale HQ (Seattle, WA) • Photo Courtesy PayScale

Generational conflict in the workplace (Millennial employees vs. Gen X, Boomer employees vs. Gen X, and so forth) has become a growth industry lately for consultants, speakers, and authors.  But I’m doubtful that this industry’s central premise–the idea that everyone in a generation acts essentially like everyone else in that generation, and that it’s possible, therefore, to “generationally manage” your workforce–is the most useful way to think about your workforce.

Here’s an alternative view of your workforce: Although there are, on average, differences between generations, they are dwarfed by the sharper distinctions you’ll find between individual human beings.  And individual human beings, rather than generations, are what make up a workforce.  Doug Carr of FRHI speaks eloquently to this point:

For an organization to go out and say 'millennials are this way' or 'Gen Xs are like this' is too broad-brushed. Across all three of our brands, we stick to the approach of 'Select the best,' based on the characteristics we feel are best for the position. We don't muddy the waters by saying “when you're hiring a millennial, look for X,” because, whether you're 22 years old or you're 50 years old, if it's in you to give heartfelt service, we want you working here. Psychologically, all such high performers, according to the methodology we use in collaboration with Gallup, are going to have very similar profiling characteristics.

In regard to millennial employees in particular: I'm going to disappoint some readers by refusing to join in with the very vocal chorus that’s been ranting about "kids these days," kids who, so the silly talk goes, “expect medals for just showing up.” Not only am I not interested in piling on, I don’t think “kids these days” are deserving of any such pile-on. Millennial employees represent the best-educated (the most schooling, the highest SAT scores, computer coding and other advanced skills learned as early as middle school) and most thoughtfully-raised (more about that below) cohort in history. And, regardless of whether you agree with this assessment of millennial employees, you’d best get used to them being around; it’s predicted that by 2025 three quarters of workers globally will be millennials.

Having said this, it’s true that different generations tend to bring different expectations to the workplace, and that there’s value in understanding these expectations and fulfilling them to the best of your ability as an employer.  As far as millennials in particular are concerned, here are four of these employee expectations, with suggestions for how to address them.

1. They want to share responsibility–so find ways to let them. Millennials, in many cases, have grown up under a style of parenting that supported individual empowerment, where the kids were almost always included in family decision-making. Now, as they enter the early stages of their careers, millennial employees are often getting a bad rap for coming into the workforce with an immediate sense of entitlement. While that’s a gross overgeneralization, it’s fair to say that millennials are looking for a feeling that they’re more than a cog in a massive machine. So as an employer, “try to create opportunities that give Millennials the chance to take responsibility and find success on a micro level before they move on to larger roles,” says Jay Coldren of EDITION. For example, continues Coldren, “Make one small team of employees responsible for handling the ordering and stocking and determination of par levels [the quantity an item needs to fall to to trigger a reorder] of the office supplies. In a restaurant, a small team can be made responsible for ordering the wines, while others are deputized to handle the stocking and ordering of the serviceware, and so forth. Offering up such areas of micro-responsibility will keep your new workers engaged outside of the normal scope of their day.”

Millennials also may expect a timetable for career advancement that comes off as unrealistic to their managers; as one company leader said off the record to me, “Great people are coming into our industry who are highly educated and who all want to be directors of everything immediately.” The most successful response to this is a simple one: compromise. Make it clear that advancement isn’t possible on the millennial’s idealized schedule, but that if they make a commitment to their current position and department that may seem long to them (yet is shorter than the previous norm in your company), they will be rewarded with additional opportunities for growth on a timetable that they can depend on.

2. Support their desire for work/life balance. Millennials have often shared with me their unwillingness to sacrifice their off-work time or to make other lifestyle compromises in return for financial compensation. It’s been argued that millennials’ inclination in this regard relates to them having watched their boomer parents delay happiness in return for career advancement, a worldview they’re not willing to buy into for themselves. Regardless of the reason for this attitude, it needs to be taken into consideration by employers today.

Shelley Meszoly, Regional Director of Sales and Marketing at Fairmont Southampton (Bermuda): "My younger staff will work their rear ends off for me when they're here, but they’re also all about having their nights and weekends entirely free and clear."

There’s no silver bullet solution here that I’m aware of. Humane scheduling is a challenging question that has been stumping even mighty Starbucks, which, after The New York Times shined a light on the issue, has committed companywide to coming up with more compassionate scheduling approaches.  A start is to accept that the millennial desire for work-life balance is admirable and that any scheduling solutions you make in this regard will also benefit your overall workforce; the desire to have time for a life outside of work is not exclusive to any one generation.

3. Let them work for an ethical organization–by being one. Just like millennial customers, millennial employees (and potential employees) are concerned with organizational ethics and social responsibility.  The extent to which you can satisfy these concerns will determine a significant part of your success in recruiting and retaining your pick of employees.  

Doug Carr:

[In recruiting], we work very closely with schools such as Cornell. The students who’ve been coming out of university for several years now are very focused on the social responsibility profile of any organization they’re considering working for.  They want to know your company’s stance on the environment, on community involvement and social responsibility, whether your company wins awards for its eco-tourism or green lodging. All of this plays a large role in whether or not they're interested in coming to work for you.   

4. Yes, they want feedback. So give it to them. Many millennials have received adult feedback throughout their earlier years; they’ve often had close involvement from parents in their education and close support and encouragement from teachers and mentors at school. The contrast can be jarring when they arrive at their first professional position and suddenly have nobody who’s interested in telling them how they’re doing. One recently-hired millennial told me “this was the first time in my life that nobody cared about the quality of my work–or if they actually did care, I couldn’t tell.  The quality of my work could be great, or just o.k.; the response I received was the same either way.”

The solution here is obvious, and is an organizational win regardless of generation: provide more input. Not just via formal, periodic performance reviews, but through informal responses daily, or weekly.  Your employees will appreciate this, and you’ll get more out of them to boot.

Micah Solomon is a Seattle company culture consultant, customer service consultant, keynote speaker, trainer, and bestselling author.