Why is professional development the best talent attraction strategy? The answer might surprise you! It’s important to understand the history of Millennials, as the attitudes, perceptions, and approaches of today’s managers affect how they interact, empathise and manage the wants and needs of today’s workforce.
Development is both the tool and the fix for what Millennials want.
Train people well enough so they can leave.
Treat them well enough so they don’t want to.
― Richard Branson
Millennials have gotten a bad rap.
They have been described as narcissistic, unengaged job hoppers and worse.
If the generations who raised these Gen Ys aren’t willing to take some responsibility for the alleged trophy-kid syndrome, then they can’t take credit for producing the “generation me” that are confident, adaptable, resourceful, educated, tech-savvy multitaskers that think – and do – outside of the box.
Do Millennials Job Hop?
They do – but no more than Gen Xer’s. Why do some hop? Millennials are looking for quick career mobility, but the gig economy of agile talent and today’s flat organisations constrain their opportunities for growth and advancement. This is largely why nearly 70 per cent of Millennials are not engaged and why we have an entrepreneurism epidemic.
Given that Millennials will comprise 75 per cent of the workforce in a few years, instead of maligning these high-achievers, we should learn how to incentivise them and create the opportunities they seek.
What Do Millennials Want?
Jim Clifton, CEO of Gallup, said Millennials:
- don’t just work for a pay cheque – they want purposeful and meaningful work
- don’t just pursue job satisfaction – they pursue development
- don’t want bosses – they want coaches
- don’t want annual reviews – they want ongoing communication and feedback
- don’t want to fix their weaknesses – they want to develop their strengths.
Why Millennials want and need development
Tell me and I forget; teach me and I may remember; involve me and I learn.
― Benjamin Franklin
Many Millennials missed out on essential life skills with both parents working. Tired from work and frequently riddled with guilt, parents compensated for their daily absence by praising, serving and waiting on their children rather than showing them how to cook, organise, balance finances, or change tires.
The shift to a service-based economy (for those who can afford it) hasn’t helped. Lawns are mowed, oil is changed, toilets are unclogged with the click of Craigslist or Airtasker.
Living in the digital-lane, Millennials spend less time interacting with their parents because their minds are in the “cloud” and their faces are tethered to iPhones – which their parents bought and paid for.
On another front, school curriculum transformed from practical hands-on survival of Design & Technology and Home Economics to a more abstract mental skill development. In addition to being shielded from life skills, Millennials live at home longer because of steep housing costs, HECs debt, and scarcity of living-wage jobs.
The outcome? A disadvantaged generation that is disparaged because they have been deprived of adulting.
Holly Swyers, a professor of anthropology and Racheal Weinstein, psychotherapist, identified and addresses these gaps and disadvantages by teaching adulting. “Adulting School” helps Millennials “navigate from dependence to independence,” developing skills in business, finance, and professional networking, through mentor assisted live webinars and private social media groups.
Whatever the reasons for Millennials’ deep-seated growth needs, relentless pursuit of knowledge and hard-core drive for personal and professional development, it’s a positive. Organisations can benefit by creating learning environments that satisfy Millennial wants and fill the “skills” gap among this surging workforce.
Creating agile learning environments
Coaching and mentoring are optimal methods for development, ongoing communication, designing meaningful work, and building on strengths and life skills. Mentoring further helps Millennials mature into “adulting” and offers insights about your organisation, mission, and operations, allowing them to see how their role contributes to the bigger picture. All of which makes work more meaningful.
Unlike the traditional “boss” focused on tactical job descriptions, mentors learn about their mentee’s strengths and ambitions, and then set goals to guide them on the behaviours, skills, and connections needed to reach their objectives, and increase their business acumen and strategic relationships.
Let’s not forget, this digital cohort’s prowess and proclivity for social media and the Internet of Things. E-learning, LMS, and learning mobile apps complement coaching and mentoring.
Millennials not only rely on platforms such as these but e-learning LMS keeps them engaged because it supplements ongoing communication through immersive learning communities and message boards. E-learning delivers the bitesize training that Millennials can digest over time so they can reflect on and then practice newly acquired learnings and knowledge until they have honed the skills.
LMS tools also provide quantifiable results that reveal progress for both the employee and organisation. The combination of e-learning LMS, mentoring, and coaching confers constant feedback to employees, and transfers what they have learned into something that matters ― practical skills aligned with their goals to contribute, impact and advance.
Strengths development
Another priority that organisations face is Millennials’ pivotal focus on developing their strengths.
Gallup recommends companies transition to a “strengths-based culture”; otherwise, “they won’t attract and keep their stars.” In this regard, a useful tool like CliftonStrengths online assessment, (a.k.a. StrengthsFinder 2.0) can be tapped. In fact, 85% of Fortune 500 companies use it to help develop their workforce.
Interpreting strengths-assessment results can be illuminating, but the process itself may be even more beneficial. After employees complete the assessments, managers should have them share their results at the next team meeting. The process itself is engaging because they learn about each other, realise common strengths and build trust. Armed with these insights, managers can better coach to employee strengths and design individual and team projects.
Whenever there are training costs there is usually resistance. When proposing tools such as LMS and CliftonStrengths to finance, remember what the CFO asked, “What happens if we invest in developing our people and they leave us?” Then remember what the CEO said, “What happens if we don’t and they stay?”
A development program that doesn’t break the budget or resources
With scarce resources and tight budgets, many organisations are challenged to offer purpose, meaning and continuous development to employees. Nevertheless, it can be accomplished through the pairing of individuals. Peer-to-peer pairing began nearly two decades ago when Alan Cooper, the father of Visual Basic, founded pair design. But pairing is no longer just a programmer’s panacea. It has evolved into paired work partners, also called paired research, where pairs meet for a few hours weekly, dividing time to work together on projects in their field of expertise.
Leading corporations got the memo. They know that continuous growth and development is a goal in itself, but it’s also part of a larger goal to perform work that matters. While they interlace several methods, including Corporate Social Responsibility and philanthropy, to fulfill altruistic values, paired work and job rotation are used to satisfy Millennials’ pursuit of meaning and sense of progress through development and career mobility.
Pairing as a mutual mentorship
Job rotation has been around for decades but it can be disruptive because it usually requires long-term assignments in different locations. Pairing resembles facets of job rotation, but it functions as a mutual mentorship where peers learn from one another. And it is less costly because pairing is typically based on short-term assignments internal to the location or within local departments.
Although peer-to-peer pairing rotations typically occur more frequently, it can still offer benefits similar to job rotation, including exposure to various roles, business segments, functional areas and experts.
Pairing exposes employees to hands-on, experiential challenges that expand perspectives, knowledge, networks, and skills. Pairing mentorships can be utilised as a horizontal career lattice opening up opportunities to advance to a new level.
Multinationals such as Boeing, Siemens, Vanguard, Amazon, and Deloitte have implemented different flavors of job rotation and mentoring programs. These enterprises make personal and professional development part of their core strategy because they know that ongoing development not only attracts top talent but keeps them engaged, and thus they stay longer.
Why pairing is a win/win for employees and companies
Working pairs increase:
- intrinsic motivation, meaningful relationships and productivity
- knowledge and skills that are transferrable across the organisation
- leadership opportunities and accelerated advancement
- learning of clients and customers, and transfer of domain knowledge.
Working pairs decrease:
- costly turnover and absenteeism
- poor decision-making, mistakes & unethical shortcuts
- silos of knowledge and information within the organisation
- personal internet usage and social media distractions.
Pairs also reduce unhealthy competitive cultures as it involves shared ownership of the goal. In addition, it brings a sense of accountability because people in pairs typically don’t want to let their partner down.
Coaching, e-learning LMS, and the interaction and interdependency that occurs between pairs can confer the relationships and dynamics that fulfill the values Millennials desire and create sustainable value for the organisation such as employee attraction, engagement, loyalty and commitment.
How does your company invest in growth and development? Let us know in the comments.
Christine Alexy is a professional writer focused on motivational psychology and leadership development. After 15 years of IT network engineering, Christine re-invented her career when she graduated with honours from Penn State University with a BS in Business Leadership and IT/Security and Risk Analysis.
Dovetailing her professional leadership experience, she is a ghostwriter and researcher for top business leaders and a popular blogger. Christine has supplied extensive research and writing for Steve Van Valin, CEO of Culturology, helping him author a manuscript on purpose and meaning at work. She also ghostwrites high-level content for the HR industry related to ethics and organisational culture. A staunch proponent for meaningful and innovative leadership for today’s multi-generational workforce, Christine regularly shares her insights through her Thought Leadership Thursday blog posts on LinkedIn, @Serve2LeadLyceum on Twitter, and Leadership Lyceum on Google+.