Competition for good employees is fierce. You’re not just competing against companies within your own industry for great employees, you’re competing against many other industries, too.
How to Attract and Retain Millennials in the Workforce
In addition to the state of the economy, another factor affecting your overall staffing strategy is generational. It’s estimated that millennials will make up 50 percent of the global workforce by 2020, and 75 percent by 2025. These young people – generally born in the 80s and 90s – have grown up in a world dominated by technology and more recently, social media. They often get a bad rap, but as they continue to mature their positive qualities in the workplace are coming into focus. Here’s what you need to know:
Millennials crave training. These employees want to learn new things, usually within the context of “what’s-in-it-for-me.” Use this desire for self-improvement to your advantage. Focus on the Top 10 Employee Training Topics and be sure to put a spin on every training session that helps your millennial employees understand how mastering the content will help them not only in their jobs, but in their overall lives.
Millennials want to be part of a team. Once called the “me-me-me” generation by Time Magazine, millennials are growing out of the nickname that labeled them as completely self-centered. This is the generation that grew up with the mindset of sharing everything they do with online groups. If you have Limited English Proficiency (LEP) team members, today’s employees want to be able to include those people and communicate them with. Similarly, LEP millennials on workplace teams want to both communicate in English and share elements of their own language and culture. Language training is a big boost to millennials, no matter what their native language is.
Millennials care about what you stand for. The older millennials get, they more they care about social causes and corporate values. They want to work for companies that care about their people and the world around them. The most important thing you can do as a manager to millennials is truly care about your team and always stay true to your word.
