Positive Employee Relations with Millennials
The differences in what motivates and satisfies millennials versus baby boomers are explored in this resource. Millennials are now the largest demographic segment in the workforce, outnumbering Gen Xers and Boomers. Thus, outdated performance systems will not serve modern employees and organizations. This text explores millennials' values and characteristics and their relationship with management.
How to fix the workplace for millennials?
| Category | How to handle this | Reason |
| Environment of the work | Give employees a schedule that is flexible and a comfortable workplace. Generate occasions to interact socially, such as get-togethers and outdoor activities | Millennials give friendships and standard of living greater value than work. They value marriage, children, and family above work |
| Opportunities to learn and benefit from training | Reimburse employees on tuition fees as well as train them | Baby boomer parents brought up their children to believe that they key to success is a good education |
| Recruitment | Highlight the methods in which the organization gives back to society | A big percentage of millennials claim that contributing to society is one of their top priorities |
| The onboarding process | Expose employees to multiple business units and provide them with intranet means that they could pace to their own comfort to help them establish relations with other workers | Millennials want connections, checkpoints, and mentoring |
| Ethics concerning work | Millennials only consider their job done when they have tackled it in the best and most rapid way. This way they can optimize on their time and effort | "…when we (Baby Boomers) were younger, you had a piano teacher who expected you to practice your piano and work hard at it, and the parents expected it. Now, parents say, Have fun, learn the piano, and practice a little bit," says WSJ columnist Jeffrey Zaslow. Millennials were not brought up to think of the next step, their main focus was always on the current task |
| Being motivated | Reward employees with time off that is considered paid | Millennials view their jobs as "something to do between the weekends" |
| Relationships with the upper managers | Win the employee over. However, be careful while doing that as the line between "boss as advocate" and "boss as friend" is thin | Millennials primarily remain in their job due to their loyalty towards their boss or supervisor. However, discontent with their employer or manager is also the number one reason why they leave. Millennials appreciate a close relationship with a caring supervisor |
| Management | Inform them of the required results and let them figure out the means to achieve them. This might be their chance to come up with a more efficient process. To extract their best performance, link it to company goals and objectives, as well as hold them responsible for their mistakes and appreciate their achievement. Imposing on them one way to do things may drive them to leave | Millennials were raised and taught how to solve their problems on their own, with technology at their side, linking them to the rest of the world. For this reason, they do not cope well when given orders and hate being told what to do without explanations of the purpose behind the task. Despite being impatient, they have a thirst for learning and acquiring new skills. Millennials consider themselves able to go with the best offer on the table. Furthermore, the support of their parents allows them the luxury of only choosing what they please in terms of job acceptance |
| Work assignment | Provide millennials with several things to do as well as the potential to interact with the clients. Furthermore including them in projects where they can interact with upper level employees | They are great multitaskers with 10 times the speed and technical knowledge of their older siblings. Although they have their own way of thinking, they do like to work as part of a team. They also value making an impact and challenging the norms |
| Feedback on performance | Coaching sessions may be useful opportunities where millennials get to discuss their career paths. Moreover, regular evaluations and revisions will also shorten the feedback loop and provide employees with performance evaluations | Millennial employees feel that they earn and deserve a promotion quickly, and their performance evaluations and constant feedback reinforce this notion |
| Reducing turnover | Create career paths with a timeframe short enough for them to envision. Reward small successes along the way | They set short-term goals and are resistant to paying their dues |
It is becoming more and more difficult to satisfy, motivate, and retain millennials in the workplace. In addition to the explained behavior of millennials that is different from boomers, some employees are subject to bullying and victimization, which makes some employees singled out and mistreated. This is a serious problem.
For example, one survey of 1000 employees in the United States concluded that about 455 said that they had worked for abusive bosses. The US government said most would agree that bullying involves three things:
Imbalance of power. This includes people who use bullying to control or harm others, while those who are bullied will have a hard time accepting others and defending themselves.
The intent to cause harm. Those who are bullying are not doing it accidentally; they intend to harm others.
The effect of repetition. Those who engage in bullying intend to harm and hence keep on repeating their behavior over and over again, and this bullying can take many forms:
It could be social: Victimizing the person by spreading rumors, trying to leave people out on purpose, trying to break out friendships
It could be verbal: Through teasing and name-calling
It could be physical: Through hitting, punching, or shoving
It could be cyberbullying: Through using the Internet or using mobile phones or other digital technologies to harm others. Through the social media
There are more people who seem to be more harmed by bullying and are more likely to be the victims. Those who are submissive victims are more anxious, cautious, quiet, and sensitive. And there are more proactive victims who show aggressiveness in behavior and others who are victims with low self-determination who leave it to others to make decisions for them. High performers in organizations can create more envious people around them and suffer from victimization. Building teams and creating cohesiveness within the team through training and social gatherings and friendly inter team competition can help reduce the envy and sometimes heal off such envy and reduce victimization.
Beyond fairness, maintaining positive employee relations requires the establishment of communication programs, which would allow management to recognize the problems, allow employees to voice their concerns, and express their opinions and related issues.
Employees always feel better when the organization has communication programs put in place. Many employers though use communication programs to bolster their employee relations efforts. On the assumption that employees would feel better when they are in the know, they would appreciate their employers much better when kept in the loop. Encouraging an open door policy and using the webpage and the Internet to keep employees knowledgeable about the company policies and procedures and about the events taking place in the company are all positive to keep employees aware of what is going on. Keeping employees informed boosts the communication programs and improves communication in the company.
Bottom-up communication is also very healthy in order to keep management knowledgeable about what is happening in the company and what is bothering employees. In order to maintain positive employee relations and in order to short-circuit inequitable treatment, companies are using communication programs such as suggestion boxes to allow employees to voice their opinions, or they host employees to focus groups and get their feedback. They are also connecting to employees via messaging or creating web-based hot lines. Exit interviews are also a way to allow employees to voice their honest opinion while providing another opportunity for employees to sample the quality of their employee relations with their supervisors as well as their peers and to test the internal environment of the organization. Managers might also use, in addition to open doors policies, "management walking around" to informally get employees feedback on how things are going.
Similarly, employers use climate surveys and use attitude and morale surveys to support employee relation efforts. They use the surveys to measure the employees' attitude towards a variety of organizational issues, such as safety, role clarity, leadership, fairness, pay, and whether they can simply improve employee relations. So conducting climate surveys helps management identify the psychological environment, in terms of things like concerns for employee well-being, supervisory behavior, flexibility, appreciation, ethics, empowerment, political behaviors, and rewards.
Many employers use online surveys such as "know your company" survey, in order to get results whether employees are proud to work in their companies, or surveys to assess how satisfied they are with their companies, with their jobs and with their supervisors, and whether the job leads to recognition and respect. Google for instance conducts a "Googlegeist" survey which focuses on the willingness to leave the company.
Providing opportunities for two-way communication improves employee relations, especially employee recognition and award programs help achieve satisfaction. Knowing that all those surveys and programs need planning, 75% of companies have employee recognition programs, and 5% are planning to have them and to implement them soon. When planning for such programs, one needs to develop the adequate criteria in order to motivate employees to work towards them and in order to have a rational process for actually rewarding employees and awarding recognition awards.
Another way to encourage involvement for millennials in the workplace is to use social media and photo sharing in order to encourage involvement. One survey found that just over half employers use social media tools to communicate with employees and to help develop a sense of community. In addition with millennials, one can use problem-solving teams and quality circles and later engage employees in self-managed teams. Another way to improve employee relations for millennials is to use suggestion systems, which can produce significant savings.
In conclusion, companies should develop well-planned communication programs and can make use of social media in order to engage their millennials in the workplace.