The Millennial generation as employees

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The Millennial generation as employees

• Dr. Pete Markiewicz
• Indiespace.com Lifecourse AssociatesArt
  Institute of California, Los Angeles

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Topics

• Millennials in your workplace
• Courtship/Hiring
• Day 1, 2, 3
• Management Part 1
• Management Part 2
• Retention

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The Employee Challenge

• Your company will need to hire Millennials for
  their first or second jobs during the next decade
• You will need to adjust your strategy for
• Hiring
• Day 1,2,3
• Management/Mentoring
• Retention
• Companies that effectively recruit and retain
  Millennials will have a competitive advantage

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Millennials Bad press

• Naïve
• Mommy/Daddy will fix it
• Arrogance
• No respect for experience
• Belief in personal superiority
• Lack basic communication skills
• Need constant stroking
• Over-complaining
• Over-sharing
• Cant read a book
• Take any comments as criticism
• Reveal company secrets on blog

• Generation Debt
• Disloyal
• Cheaters
• Paying dues occupy space
• Uninterested in adapting
• Lack creativity
• Passive
• Assume automatic promotion
• Others responsible for my mistakes
• We all deserve promotions
• I get Facebook or I walk

5
Millennials the truth

• No generation is bad
• Bad features of one generation may be the
  good features of the next
• You cant change them
• You can exploit their strengths and adjust for
  their weaknesses
• Youre going to have to hire them!

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Millennials are different

• SPECIAL given a sense of destiny
• SHELTERED close to parents, naïve
• CONFIDENT the last winner
• CONVENTIONAL support social norms
• TEAM-PLAYER rely on social networks
• PRESSURED great expectations
• ACHIEVING hard workers

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Bringing Millennials into your workplace

• Courtship and Hiring getting real and on time
• Day 1, 2, 3 help them hit the ground running
• Management what you need to teach
• Management what you need to learn
• Retention getting that elusive loyalty

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Millennial psychological reality

• Millennials heroes who will save the world
• Huge pressure to become said heroes
• Their opinions were equally valuable as their
  parents and other authority figures
• No losers/failures here just the last winner
• They expect timetables, schedules, planners
  describing how to save the world
• They can always fall back on Mom and Dad
• I am extraordinary!

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Millennial transactional reality

• Helicopter parents made life a series of constant
  (re)negotiations
• Always-on, bursty media (cellphones, Internet)
  break reality into lots of little, discrete
  transactions
• Constant communication facilitated by technology
  (social networks, cellphones)
• Expect small, immediate rewards (gold stars),
  rather than a chance at the long-term jackpot
• Expect progressive rewards (like levels in a
  game)
• Uncertain future (political, technology) implies
  to them that long-term planning is absurd
• I am loyal to the transaction, not the institution

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Homo mobilis

• Millennials adapt to information overload
  packet-switching - communicating in frequent,
  short bursts
• Constant communication increases re-negotiation,
  reduces advance planning, reading
• Need frequent contact (pinging), for
  consensus-building with their friends
• Definition of friend loosened to someone you
  can communicate with
• Looser definition of public versus private
  information (a public web page seems private to
  them).

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Everything is negotiable
Older people use their mobile phones to
"micro-co-ordinate" with partners during the day
in order to run their errands more efficiently
and younger people, who have never known paper
diaries or an unconnected world,
micro-co-ordinate in order to avoid committing
themselves to any fixed meeting time, location or
person at all. After all, a better opportunity
might yet present itself-The Economist, Homo
Mobilis, April 10, 2008
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Millennial customer-centric reality

• Marketing to Millennials reinforced the idea that
  they were special
• Retail pitches to Millennials implied that they
  were a must have customer that would always get
  premium service
• Millennials join a company as a customer,
  expecting great service from said company
• Work for company series of transactions (like a
  sale) with reciprocal benefit
• Poor customer service reason to leave

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Courtship hiring the practice

• Employers compete for best talent with aggressive
  hiring practices (reinforcing specialness)
• Potential employees are wined and dined
  (reinforcing their special customer status)
• The company value proposition for employees is
  poorly defined, especially in the short term
• Months pass before the hire/first day of work,
  often with minimal contact
• New employee reports, bursting with excitement
• Gone in 60 seconds

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Courtship reasons

• Employers make hiring into a sales pitch
• Reinforces employee as customer conceit
• Employer discusses vague, long-term potential
• Millennials want to know about tomorrow, next
  week, next month
• Value proposition not broken down to a series of
  progressive transactions
• Employer takes too long
• Long gaps between hire and Day 1
• The constant, transactional communication
  expected by Millennials is missing

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Courtship - solutions

• Dont treat potential employees as customers
• Tell the truth (realistic job previews, e.g.
  shadowing)
• Show the good, then try to scare them away
• Explain short-term as well as long-term
  opportunities
• Use trusted sources to find hires
• Employees with children
• Friend networks of existing employees
• Keep in touch
• Send sample work, background material
• Have key people enter their business network
  before Day 1
• Create your employee brand
• Value proposition for employees
• Short-term, as well as long-term benefits

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Day 1,2,3 the practice

• Employee comes in bursting with ideas
• Are you ready to give me a good job experience?
• Why am I not by the window?
• Why are people ignoring my great idea?
• Why cant I talk to the people who count
  anymore?
• Why wont anyone tell me what to do?
• Why cant we re-negotiate our meeting time?
• Why cant I use Facebook at work?
• Employee not listened to
• Told to move arms and legs
• Told to wait until they learn the ropes
• Youre too enthusiastic
• Ignored when they present ideas
• Gone in a weekand Mom shows up in supervisors
  office!

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Day 1,2,3 - reasons

• Millennials are used to being heard
• Told they were especially clever, creative
• Had their ideas listened to as equals by
  authority
• Unaware that experience often trumps insanely
  great ideas
• Assume bursty on-demand learning (fast Internet
  lookup) is better than slow accumulation of
  experience
• Expect to immediately enter transaction-based
  reality
• I consume your rules, goals and receive benefit
• Looking for the specifics needed to complete a
  transaction not the overlying wisdom of the
  approach
• Rules, deadlines are observed but in an async,
  packet-switched fashion

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Day 1,2,3 - solutions

• Make sure they hit the ground running
• Meaningful work on day 1
• Work must have a defined success marker
• Let them customize their office space, computer
  to improve workflow
• React to insanely great ideas
• Ask for more justification
• Have them do the downside analysis
• Put an advisor in the loop
• Break their work into tiny, progressive steps
• Unbundle complex corporate roles (Tulgans best
  point)
• Reassemble into small, progressive, tasks
• Let them use/exploit their technology edge
• Dont deny their networks
• Allow asychronous execution of job tasks, if
  deadlines are met

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Management 1 the practice

• Millennial new hire expects helicopter
  management similar to helicopter parenting
• Manager/Mentor doesnt want a new family member
• Acts like a philosopher
• No boundaries set
• No negotiations
• Expects them to figure it out on their own
• Demands obedience without rationale
• No praise/rewards
• Gone in a two weeksor Mom shows up in managers
  office again

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Management 1 - reasons

• Manager unwilling to engage in a paternal, yet
  professional relationship
• Millennials lack an inner compass
• Millennials used to micro-management of their
  lives
• Hands-off management
• Manager feels that getting specific is
  unnecessary if big ideas are understood
• Manager doesnt provide enough praise/rewards
  (even symbolic ones)
• Negotiation interpreted as insubordination
• Manager doesnt assign responsibility for
• Adjustment/optimization of work environment
• Important projects (may not be possible)

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Management 1 - solutions

• Parental management style
• Advise rather than mentor (no cosmic discussions
  with employee
• Set ground rules (repeatedly)
• Constant pinging of employee to ascertain their
  status
• One boss, not many
• Paternal, yet professional
• Know their names, ideas, goals
• Give them creative responsibility (e.g. keeping
  track of their own performance, first
  impression research)
• Focused management
• Specific assignments with structure
• Explain decisions
• Lend your power as needed, with evaluation
• Create structure
• Timelines, timetables, deadlines
• Metric for success (score-keeping)
• Reward strategy (gold stars)

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Management 2 the practice

• New hire advertised as awesome
• New hire irritates managers, older employees
• New hire expects responsibility beyond their
  years
• Management tries to fix the employee
• Employee responds poorly to help
• Confrontation
• Employee does something brazen (e.g. looking for
  work on company time)
• Employee is fired
• Dad tries to sue the company

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Management 2 - reasons

• They cant figure it out alone (like you did?)
• Theyre employees, not customers
• Other people know more than they do
• Things take time in the real world
• The new generation will always
• Want a family, not an army of one
• Expect authority to provide guidance
• Expect authority to keep score
• Need help digesting criticism
• Expect praise for performance
• Treat work as a transaction, not a higher calling

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Management 2 - solutions

• Hold your nose and praise them
• Accept that they arent interested in big ideas
• Respect their ideas
• Institute a point reward system, or even literal
  gold stars
• Make it a transaction
• Buy their work via small rewards (Tulgan)
• Replace traditional compensation model with
  short-term payouts (Internet, game, rock star
  model)
• Encourage respect
• Demonstrate (dont just tell them) that older and
  wiser is just that
• Match their respect (no racists, sexist, any-ist
  things)
• Encourage self-criticism (have them make a list)

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Retention the challenge

• New hire asks questions about the long-term
  repeatedly during courtship
• Upon starting work, new hire is only interested
  in the here and now
• Little or no loyalty to company, brand
• Employee questions value of company work
• New hire abruptly leaves without warning during
  first 6 months
• Extra cost for hiring someone new

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Retention the reasons

• Millennials lack loyalty except to a good
  transaction
• Millennials are very loyal to social/political
  causes
• During the hire process, Millennials dont bring
  up the short term for fear of missing the job
• Millennials assume they can negotiate to
  configure their ideal job
• Millennials are certain there must be greener
  pastures for someone as special as myself
• If not, Mom has the bedroom ready

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Retention - solutions

• Lead them to the long-term
• Provide numerous, progressive, short-term goals
• Teach them to think strategically
• Study of company history
• Study of past employee experiences
• Define your company as a cause
• Create an employee brand
• Provide value statements
• Define the good citizen in the company
• Make the company a cause rather than a business

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Summary

• Hiring
• Be honest about the job
• Listen to ideas
• Break work into small, discrete steps
• Management
• Paternal, yet professional
• Focused, detail-oriented mentoring
• Praise them, and give out gold stars
• Make work a transaction
• Retention
• Lead them to the long-term
• Make your employee brand a worthy cause

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Recommended Reading
Millennial Makeover MySpace, YouTube The
Future of American Politics by Morley Winograd,
(2008, Rutgers) ISBN 0-8135-4301-0
Not Everyone Geta A Trophy How to Manage
Generation Yby Bruce Tulgan (2009, Wiley)ISBN
978-0-470-25626-8
Millennials IncorporatedThe Big Business of
Recruiting, Managing and Retaining the the
Worlds New Generation of Young Professionalsby
Lisa Orrell (2008, Wyatt-MacKenzie) ISBN
978-1-932279-82-5
Millennials and the Pop Culture by Pete
Markiewicz, (2005, Lifecourse) http//lifecouAlso
see this locations for additional book by
Strauss Howe/Lifecourse http//lifecourse.com/s
tore/books.html