How to manage millennials effectively.

 

Millennials or Generation Y represents who were born between early 1980s and mid-1990.  These ones are currently moving in to the job markets and within the next few years they will start dominating the global workforce.

With more millennials joining organizations, a perception has been built in that it is quite challenging to manage them effectively. Following are the commonly known characteristics of millennials,

1.       Tech Savy

2.       Achievement oriented

3.       Family centric

4.       Craves Attention

5.       Team oriented

6.       Prone to job hopping

As a result of these characteristics Millennials create following challenges for the management.

They prefer to work in digitalized work environments that is equipped with smart phones, laptops, cloud based solutions etc. Thus organizations reacting slowly to the changes on the technology has fewer opportunities to recruit / retain these millennials.

Millennials are more focused on their duties, responsibilities and goals. Hence they prove to have a drive towards achieving set targets/stretch targets. At the same time, they prefer to work in teams.

They can be nick named as attention seekers as they require appreciations, rewards and recognition then and there. If organizational culture is not set to meet the same Millennials will get de motivated and board.

Millennials require a clear career path and they need to move up in the hierarchy within a shorter life span. Hence if the management is unable to provide them a secession plan, if the job is not helping them to improve they will move out without any hesitation. This is creating a drastic impact on basic HR functions such as recruitments, employee retaining and loyalty.

Following HR related initiatives/actions will help in organizations for effective management of millennials.

1.       Adopting the change

Organizations requires to be upfront with the technological advancements been taken place globally and understand how those could be effectively used for the betterment of the business. Successful adaptation of such new technologies will create a technically driven organizational culture.

With or without the use of such technologies organizations can change the way it operates, by allowing flexible working hours. This will again help for better management of people as it will cater to them to achieve work – life balance.

2.       Establishing a learning culture

A learning organization is being identified as a place where the whole organization is continuously working together to learn from others and to update their knowledge. A learning culture will be appealing to the knowledge seeking millennials as it will upgrade their profile while creating a competitive advantage for the business.

3.       Managing Aspirations

Millennials are known to be a set of people that requires to move fast on the career ladder and to accomplish the same they will change the job, organization. Proper implementation of strategies for managing aspiration would help management to retain them.

4.       Building up the employee brand

This will help to attract, to retain as well as to get the millennials engaged to their jobs.

Accordingly, HR professionals has a critical role to play in formulating HR strategies that will help for the effective management of millennials to ensure more employee engagement, to motivate them reduce turnover and cost of recruitments which will directly and indirectly uplift the performance of organizations and drives the organizations towards its set objectives.  

Reference

Chip Espinoza, Mick Ukleja, Craig Rusch. (2010). Managing the Millennials: Discover the Core Competencies for Managing Todays workforce. In M. U. Chip Espinoza, Managing the Millennials: Discover the Core Competencies for Managing Today s workforce (p. 10). Canada: John Wiley & Sonc Inc.

Common Characteristics of Generation Y Professionals. (n.d.). Retrieved December 20, 2017, from thebalance.com: https://www.thebalance.com/common-characteristics-of-generation-y-professionals-2164683

Millennials. (2017). Retrieved December 22, 2017, from wikipedia.com: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennials

William I. Sauser, Jr., Ronald R. Sims. (2012). Managing Human Resources for the Millennial Generation. In J. R. William I. Sauser, Managing Human Resources for the Millennial Generation (p. 328). North Carolina: Information Age Publishing Inc.