Three Strategies for Engaging Millennial Talent

Currently, three generations are in the workforce: Baby Boomers, Generation X’ers, and Millennials. By some estimates, within 10 years the majority of the workforce will be millennials, and within 20 years almost all Baby Boomers won’t be working 40 hours/week anymore.

There are a couple of different theories about how work will ultimately change as a result of this demographic shift.

One of the most popular is that traditional top-down management styles will give way to more team-centric approaches -- this is often called ‘holacracy,’ and is in play already at companies such as Zappos.

Some academics have challenged the idea that top-down authority will ever fade out, and the complete picture remains to be seen.

What is apparent, though, is that new strategies of engagement will be necessary with a predominantly-millennial workforce. Here’s a look at three such measures.

1. Genuine Confidence In Leadership

An Australian startup called cultureamp did a study on people intelligence across different generations, and found that 74% of millennials believed that “confidence in leadership” was a key driver of engagement.

This isn’t surprising.

If you read the tea leaves of most employee engagement studies, there are major links between “quality of manager” and how engaged an employee feels. (This is all the more sobering when you consider that, according to Gallup, 82 percent of managerial hires are ultimately the wrong one.) This does run up with the idea of holacracy.

Basically, employees are looking for direct communication with managers.

First Round Review did a profile of Medium, a company using this approach, and quoted Jason Stirman (a manager who previously worked for Twitter in its early days). Stirman explains some of the frustration around the “classic management advice” that Baby Boomer leaders often follow:

“Classic management advice, and all my mentors told me that insulating your team from things so they won’t worry will make them more productive and happier,” he says. “But they just got angry, and confused, and disconnected. I was constantly censoring all this information and they were way happier when they knew everything.”

This idea about “genuine confidence in leadership,” as measured by cultureamp and others, really comes back to this idea about transparency and organic communication, which are other ways you’ll hear the arguments around new management styles phrased.

2. Craft “Impact Jobs”

You’ve heard it over the cubicle wall from time-to-time, no doubt: “We’re not saving the world here.”

Not every job can have tremendously tangible impact, but … you can tap into the passions of the employees by creating a context where they’re there for a bigger reason than just the overall profit margin.

Fast Company cites a survey from NetImpact (a 2012 talent report) that employees who felt they had “impact jobs” were twice as satisfied and engaged at work. In this context, “impact jobs” means being able to volunteer or donate as a work team, or within work hours, or create projects around causes and not just the bottom line.

This has some overlay with the idea of “ROWE” -- Results-Only Work Environments -- which have gotten some traction as a concept to engage the millennial generation. Under this management set-up, you work enough to get your stuff done; the rest of the time is yours to do what you want with.

Unsurprisingly, many people dislike this concept right now -- but it could evolve to a place where your work time is a mix of “getting stuff done” and “helping the organization be involved in deeper causes,” if that seems to work as a millennial engagement strategy.

3. Crowd-Sourcing Innovation From Within

Again, the key here goes back to the central idea of transparency -- you want to, in the words of ClearCompany CEO Andre Lavoie enable a culture. According to Lavoie, “Enabling a culture that promotes suggestions from employees can give employers insights they wouldn’t get elsewhere.”

We couldn’t agree more -- that’s actually the heart of what we do at Vocoli. We’re all about using a suggestion platform to foster innovation, engage employees, and improve communication.

In our view, the cornerstone of the future workplace will rely on accountability and transparency, as well as a different way to look at the process of engaging with employees. That’s why we have this blog -- to explore new ideas in that space.

We’ll have a follow-up post to this next week on some other millennial-engagement strategies, but for now -- what do you think? What is necessary to engage the next pre-eminent workforce generation? Tweet us @_Vocoli and let us know your thoughts.