How to Deal with New Generation of Employees

What is your strategy to deal with Millennials?

The millennials are the “Gen Y” or "Net Generation" born between 1980 to 1995. There are about 80 millions of them, twice as much as Gen X and they have been raised with the belief that they are special. They tend to be good at working independently with a “can do” attitude.
Dr. McElhaney from Berkeley's School of Business says that the biggest difference between previous generations and the millenials is that they feel powerful enough to make a difference.

"They are tech savvy, with every gadget imaginable almost becoming an extension of their bodies. They multitask, talk, walk, listen and type, and text. And their priorities are simple: they come first” claims CBS News.

What are we nostalgic about and what change to expect?

In 90’s two rules served well, 1. Be on time 2. Do what you're expected to do. The two rules were considered to be some of the best and the staff used to quickly follow the norms set by their line managers who themselves followed their executives.

Today’s new generation believes in taking the new ideas and actually implementing them in the marketplace. However, if every person in the company is extremely innovative, free-spirited, and eccentric, the company might lack stability and grounding. The concern arises when we have to lead this tech savvy generation by taking an appropriate leadership role.
Millennials are born with the “can do” attitude about the task at work. They are positive, confident and are ready to take on the world, seek advice yet expect you to respect their ideas.
 

What are the best ways to manage millennials?

Claire Raines, an author, and the leading expert on generations in the workplace has 25 years experience with managing different generations at work describes six of the most frequent requests of millennial employees.

1. Leadership
   
2. Challenge
   
3. Collaboration
   
4. Fun
   
5. Respect
   
6. Flexibility
   

This multitasking, challenging generation can only be taken advantage of if leaders adopt the appropriate management role. An ideal situation would be to adopt the policy of “give and take”, by providing them:

1. Leadership with honesty and integrity to become role models
   
2. Challenging tasks that provide growth, development, and a career path
   
3. Hiring like minded group of employees for better collaboration
   
4. Fun and humour to keep the workplace attractive
   
5. Respect employees ideas for better upshots
   
6. Adopting new work rules to keep the workplace flexible.
   

In context of the above points, Schrum and Levin state that "leaders will lose their Millennials if they do not meet their high expectations, discount their ideas because of their lack of experience, tolerate negativity, or feel threatened by their technical skills […  leaders need to capitalize on, value, and make good use of their many positive characteristics, or they will move on.”
 

Watch an extract from 60 minutes interview with Jason Dorsey who teaches companies to deal with their Gen Y employees.

 
Tom Fox in Washington Post quote Tulgan “it’s not that millennials think they know everything or that they’re entitled to the top job on day one. Rather, he said, “they want to hit the ground running on day one. They want to identify problems that nobody else has identified, solve problems that nobody else has solved, make existing things better, invent new things. They want to make an impact.”
 

Why does your leadership count?

Meeting 21^st century’s challenges and leading this tech savvy generation will no longer be a problem if you redefine your leadership and adopt some of the innovative norms of today’s digital life. Command-and-control approaches to managing people are becoming less effective and have been replaced with values such as collaboration and shared purpose. Do you apply these? 

The best organisations like Whole Foods, Panera, SAS and Google are focusing to have a sustainable culture. When a company is perceived to be one that really cares about its employees, it can prove to be a great PR or branding opportunity. 

Global outsourcing is another twist. Developing 24/7 hours operational culture and social media platforms such as LinkedIn and Facebook make it easier to maintain relationships with current and past co-workers. This results into greater amount of knowledge and employees are being known for who they know and can access. 

Employees are less interested in where they sit instead of what they know. With this tech savvy mind set, and an uncontrollable social media role, managers and leaders are supposed to set new definitions of leadership and teamwork. New setup has eliminated the role of “playing the positions” and has emerged the mindset as do what is needed. 

Leaders, therefore, must proactively address these trends to ensure their organizations evolve toward growth. 

How are you using the most up to date pschological, social and organisational technologies available to manage millennials as employees, clients and competitors?

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