Most millennial workers are approaching their careers with high expectations. They want to find a role and organization that fit their life and give them a sense of contributing to something bigger than themselves. They are very interested in doing work that feels meaningful and purposeful to them. And they want to be able to use their talents to do their best work and are consistently looking for opportunities to get better through learning and development.
Now when it comes to engaging your talent, millennials are no different from every other worker in every organization – one size does not fit all. Every generation of talent want to be treated how they want to be treated. As a leader, this means uniquely enabling each worker with the personalized skills, competencies, rewards and recognition that they want, when they want it.
Many argue that workers of the non-millennial generations tend to stay longer in their jobs, so that makes them more worth investing in. However, with the new work economy moving so fast and continuously changing, even so-called loyal employees will move on if they are offered a better opportunity to learn and grow with an organization.
As a generation that is growing in the workplace and swiftly moving into more management and leadership positions, learning is consistently rated as a top driver of employee engagement and attraction among millennials. Gallup found that, “Millennials are more likely than both Gen Xers and baby boomers to say a job that accelerates their professional or career development is “very important” to them (45% of millennials vs. 31% of Gen Xers and 18% of baby boomers).” (Gallup, 2017).
A key takeaway for leaders from the vast amounts of research focusing on millennials is that they are speaking up and letting their employers know what they want and their passion for growth and learning is playing a huge role in driving workplace change.
As a leader, the key areas you should focus on when it comes to attracting, engaging and retaining your millennial talent are learning, development, work-life/family balance and flexibility. As a leader your primary role should be listening to your talent and removing obstacles that get in the way of successfully delivering these things to your workforce.
Although there are small variations in the levels of engagement, and desired perks and benefits for the millennial, GenX and Baby Boomer generations, a lot of the larger picture findings were very similar. All generations of talent consistently report that they want to feel acknowledged, they want to be enabled with learning and development, and they want to be rewarded (with personalized perks and benefits) for their good performance.
For more information about how you can develop your talent with learning opportunities get in touch for a 15-minute demo of our global, mobile learning solutions.