Change few rules for Millennial Generation

Millennial, who are they? Or should I say who we are? Typically those whose birth years ranging from early 1980's to early 2000's. Generally speaking, Millennial's are children of Baby Boomers or Generation X.

Each generation of current era has different cultural identity, political views, economic prospects etc. every generation has their own set of rules by which they have embraced their lives, but irrespective of differences, each generation has its roots from its earlier generations and evolve as they live life and leave their footprints for further generations to evolve more.

Millennial generation have entered the workplace in the face of demographic change and an increasingly multi-generational workplace. It’s been very important for organizations to adapt to each generation to be successful. Just take an example of digital revolution around us, how each generation has its ability to work around it. For sure there is a difference in which one generation excels the other in one or many ways, thus it’s important for organization to be prepared and embrace each of their qualities to grow. Organizations in which we all work today, I see there is a need to do few changes, to explore the thinking of millennial generation.

1. Transparent Process

We see lot of traditional hierarchy model at work. Just look around and see really how many projects in current days are executed in a traditional approach, very few or none, as the economic change has resulted the change in how we operate, it’s all about parallel working environment these days. Hierarchy models allows work flows down and get it done and later same flow take back to get it reported which kills the transparency at each level, but in current world we don’t require work to flow from one level to other, we need to have work done.

So it’s important to reach out to right group of people, avoid all the hierarchy which really doesn’t require and get the work done. Why limit decision making or ideas sharing limited to certain hierarchy level, let it be transparent which truly encourage not only millennial generation, but all generation at work place to perform better

2. Sell company’s vision not just a hike or promotion

Compare the general qualities of generation X to Millennial's, to understand it. Generation X or Baby Boomers has given much better life to their children to what they have lived. So money is never a motivator for Millennial's or next generation Z. Don’t just talk about next year salary hike or a promotion if resource perform better, as attention span of Millennial's is way less , the one which doesn’t motivates them, doesn’t excites them to work for. So sell the company’s vision to them, which automatically excites the millennial's to perform better.

3. Move away from your organizations standard assessment and learning techniques

Standardized learning materials for technologies, Domain, class room training's and online assessment to asses employee knowledge is something we have all seen. But how many of this generation really learn from this? I say very few, talk with any of this generation, most of these learns from online portals like Coursera, Edx, YouTube, Slide Share etc. Unless something requires the class room training, this generation prefers for digital learning. You can’t hold an attention span of this generation with teaching a standard PPT material in a class room session.

Even on digital platform learning as well, it’s hard to keep this generation attention. That’s the reason we see, many register for courses online, but never finishes them.

Couple of things to address this,

a. As an example, bombarding complete CMMI process document or Agile methodologies material at once, will leave each one to learn at individual pace or completely ignore it. Unlike earlier generations, this generations keeps many other activities outside of work, may be photography, physical training, reading etc. So to engage them, it’s good to feed the smaller information every day to digest. Which allows everyone to be learn on same pace.

b. Make it a group learning activity for every day learning feed, it might be online virtual group communities or quick group activity to discuss on learnings.

c. Stop grading as it kills the creativity. Conduct group discussions, let each one to present and learn from each other and observe as whole group performance than an individual performance

Note, poor attention span I said, is not for everything which millennial's generation has. It is for focusing .on mundane or mindless task loses their attention, variety is important for them,

4. View on Digital Platform

Many organizations now have moved to online, it might be LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, or Yammer. Millennial generation are biggest flag risers of this digital revolution. Just being online is no longer enough, connect with your employees, sell your vision, engage them into discussions, point of views to have them more connected. Simple check, Just being on Yammer doesn’t means you are employee connected, see what’s the effectiveness of each group, engage them, make them part of companies journey to next biggest challenge, next revolution.

5. Try a group hiring, than an individual hiring

Standard individual hiring of smart people and later tell them what to do is biggest exercise of current recruitment process. Remember, no need to tell smart people what to do, as they know what to be done in their current opportunity and excel in it. This generation which doesn’t prefers to have hierarchy in their work culture, observe once they emerge as a successful team always, instead of individual pride. So if you see a team excels in their activities, i.e. is because they encourage each other and do very best in group activities. Rather than an individual star performer recruitment, try to recruit a group of members from the team which together make it even bigger for you.

6. Understand their Loyalty

One of the biggest issues which companies raise with millennial generation is “Lack of Loyalty”, that they move from one opportunity to other way easily.

I say they don’t understand this generation definition of loyalty. Difference is they are not loyal to company, but they are loyal to mentors at work, their team which retains them with the same company. Remember they don’t respect of authority just because someone is at higher role at work, every ounce of loyalty and respect should be earned from them, by being team player, lead with an example, be their mentor, which will earn their loyalty and once its earned, they are with you.

Remember, many but not all Stereo type of any generations are untrue. If one understands the each generation and do few changes in rules, process, business models. It will be a great win for every organization as each has multi generation work culture and it’s important to understand generation qualities of each.

# Millennial #workforce

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