Working with Millennials

The millennials joining your workforce now are employees born between 1980 and 2000 and they come with a fresh mindset, can-do attitude and seek leadership, friendship and feedback within their work places.

Read these 10 tips By Susan M. Heathfield (Human Resources Expert) on how to manage millennials:

(Amusing video on how to deal with Millennials)

Provide structure. Reports have monthly due dates. Jobs have fairly regular hours. Certain activities are scheduled every day. Meetings have agendas and minutes. Goals are clearly stated and progress is assessed. Define assignments and success factors.

Provide leadership and guidance. Millennials want to look up to you, learn from you, and receive daily feedback from you. They want “in” on the whole picture and to know the scoop. Plan to spend a lot of time teaching and coaching and be aware of this commitment to millennials when you hire them. They deserve and want your very best investment of time in their success.

Encourage the millennial's self-assuredness, "can-do" attitude, and positive personal self-image. Millennials are ready to take on the world. Their parents told them they can do it - they can. Encourage - don't squash them or contain them.

Take advantage of the millennial's comfort level with teams. Encourage them to join. They are used to working in groups and teams. In contrast to the lone ranger attitude of earlier generations, millennials actually believe a team can accomplish more and better - they've experienced team success.

Not just related to age, watch who joins the volleyball match at the company picnic. Millennials gather in groups and play on teams; you can also mentor, coach, and train your millennials as a team.

Listen to the millennial employee. Your millennial employees are used to loving parents who have scheduled their lives around the activities and events of their children. These young adults have ideas and opinions, and don't take kindly to having their thoughts ignored. After all, they had the best listening, most child-centric audience in history.

Millennial employees are up for a challenge and change. Boring is bad. They seek ever-changing tasks within their work. What’s happening next is their mantra. Don’t bore them, ignore them, or trivialize their contribution.

Millennial employees are multi-taskers on a scale you’ve never seen before. Multiple tasks don’t phaze them. Talk on the phone while doing email and answering multiple instant messages – yes! This is a way of life. In fact, without many different tasks and goals to pursue within the week, the millennials will likely experience boredom.

Take advantage of your millennial employee’s computer, cell phone, and electronic literacy Are you a Boomer or even an early Gen-Xer? The electronic capabilities of these employees are amazing. You have a salesman in China? How’s the trip going? Old timers call and leave a message in his hotel room. Or, you can have your millennial text message him in his meeting for an immediate response. The world is wide, if not yet deep, for your millennial employees.

Capitalize on the millennial’s affinity for networking. Not just comfortable with teams and group activities, your millennial employee likes to network around the world electronically. Keep this in mind because they are able to post their resume electronically as well on Web job boards viewed by millions of employers. Sought after employees, they are loyal, but they keep their options open – always.

Provide a life-work balanced workplace.Your millennials are used to cramming their lives with multiple activities. They may play on sports teams, walk for multiple causes, spend time as fans at company sports leagues, and spend lots of time with family and friends.

They work hard, but they are not into the sixty hour work weeks defined by the Baby Boomers. Home, family, spending time with the children and families, are priorities. Don’t lose sight of this. Balance and multiple activities are important to these millennial employees. Ignore this to your peril.

As always, when I characterize a group of employees based on age, or any other characteristic, some employees will fit this description; some employees will fit part of this description; some employees will not fit this description.

Yet, I believe that, if you heed these tips, you will steer your organization forward, more times than not, with a positive approach to managing your millennial employees.

Top Reasons Your Best Talent Is Leaving You

You've worked hard to claw your business into its current position and undoubtedly, your workforce has helped your business get to where it is. You and your employees have reached a point where you are all cogs in a machine, working in synergy with each other. But what would happen if one of your star players were to leave? This scary situation for employers is unfortunately a reality as more workers are quitting their jobs today than at any point since 2010.

While there are definitely forces that are out of your control to stop your best people leaving, if you create an environment (and build relationships) that makes them feel challenged, engaged, valued, and rewarded you can raise the chances of retaining your top talent.

Here are the top reasons as to why your top talent are leaving:

1. Dissatisfaction with job or responsibilities

Great workers want to be learning and growing on the job. There is always room for growth and skill development, even if they are a seasoned pro. Increasing an individual's autonomy in their role can be a great way of giving them more responsibility while still getting all the work done.  

2.  Being unchallenged and dis-engaged them

Smart workers don’t want to feel like they are working in a repetitive role full of boredom. They need to have their minds engaged and their creativity challenged. An example of how you may engage someone in the workplace might be to allow them to shadow someone else from another part of the business for a day. 

3. Lack of a sense of belonging 

On a human level, everybody wants to feel liked and cared about, or at the very least like they belong somewhere. As an employee, they want to feel like you care not only about their career but also on a personal level. An aspect of Transformational Leadership is treating employees like individuals and not just another member of the team. The old saying of "leave your emotions at the door" is no longer valid. Employees who have fun with their colleagues and look forward to being at work are more likely to stay in the long term. Letting them feel like you care about them gives them the confidence to have a voice which may lead to innovations within your business and increased productivity!

4. A misalignment between personal leadership styles and the leadership style that is required to lead effectively.

It's hard to find a balance between micro managing and being a ghost in the workplace. Your best talent want to be given enough rope to accomplish their duties and tasks themselves. Similarly, being an absent or avoidant leader by only checking in with your staff once every few months will drive them away. It is essential to find the right balance between the two ends of the spectrum and a good way to assess how you are going is to simply ask your employees "Are we meeting enough for you to be as effective as you can be?".

As the saying goes: “Employees don’t quit working for companies, they quit working for their bosses”. It is clear that these small changes that you can immediately implement will pay off and prevent your top talent from needing to look for another job. 



To find out who your top talent is, our partners, Psych Press are talent assessment and development Psychologists. Psych Press have a large selection of in-house and customisable assessment tools that link personality to performance prediction for a variety of companies. One such tool, Business Personality Reflections (BPR) has been used for a multitude of roles to ascertain a strong fit for recruiting decisions. Based on a wide field of research and multiple industry norms, this assessment provides a full report for your informed decision. To find out more visit the Psych Press Business Personality Reflections page or contact them on (03) 9670 0590. 

5 Essentials Qualities All Great Leaders Have

You have likely all been in this position... You have a leader who is great at doing some things and less than great at others. This raises the question, what does a great leader look like? Here are 5 essential attributes all “great” workplace leaders possess. Better understanding what these qualities look like will likely not only help you appreciate your leadership but hopefully incorporating them into your work may mean  that next time a leadership position becomes available within your organisation, a tap on the shoulder may not be a long-shot.

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence consists of the ability to understand and manage your own emotions, as well as those of the people around you. This is essential to gain insight into how the people around you feel, think, and interpret their responses to actions or decisions. This allows leaders to effectively pre-empt and intervene in any conflict between people and help them maintain a happy and task-oriented workplace.

Wealth of Knowledge

It is important for a leader to be aware of the people around them as well as the market, competitors and any relevant information that may become available in the future. Understanding why mistakes have happened in the past within the company and competitors is essential to prevent them being repeated in future, when a leader is aware of this they can quickly act when a situation is becoming similar to a prior error. Knowledge of competitors allows a leader to be more effective in identifying holes that have been left out and creatively add to the business for a more distinguished product or service.

Confidence

Having confidence is essential for any leader, without confidence a person may seem flawed and that makes them hard to follow. Those who are being led are inspired to work much harder and efficiently if their leader is confident that their task will be effective.

Integrity

Integrity is one the highest valued traits that staff desire from their leaders. Being consistently honest and forthright shows staff that they know exactly where you stand as a leader, will respect any boundaries you set in place and will be more likely to reciprocate the same way. As a leader becomes more powerful, having integrity shows that you’re not working out of self-interest and the world revolves around more than just yourself.

Optimism

Optimists help to keep everyone future orientated, in a leadership position they manage with hard work and dedication towards a common goal. Followers become much more inspired to work to a common goal if their leader sees a bright light at the end of the tunnel. They have an unconditional positive regard for any obstacle that may arise, being able to take the best from the worst situations. For most businesses something will inevitably go wrong, an optimistic leader will bounce back faster and with a better attitude to deal with future complications.

With these traits a leader can be effective in targeting the market and rallying their followers to achieve the best possible outcomes in any business.

5 qualities of effective leaders

There are plenty of articles and books that have been published, telling you what it takes to become a highly effective leader. Many people would say you need specific skills and abilities; some say it lies all in the personality of the individual. Despite all of the ambiguity, people know effective leadership when they see it. It is essentially a blend of personality and skills that encompasses an individual.

Good leaders are always there to motivate their team and achieve the highest levels of performance and outstanding organisation in the process. It takes more than a day to become a leader but with the five steps below, you can make a start on becoming a better one today.

1. Honesty – “Honesty is the best policy” is a quote often heard and it is true.  Your business and its employees are a reflection of yourself.  One of the many missed opportunities of displaying honesty is when handling a mistake. Many leaders will avoid failure to the extent that they won’t admit when their ideas did not work. Being honest in your actions and words ensures that employees will have little doubt in your integrity as an effective leader. If you uphold honesty and sincerity, your fellow teammates will follow suit.

2. Confidence – When things are spiralling down the wrong direction or your business encounters a setback, you need stay confident and maintain the morale of the team to ensure things get back on track. Good leaders need to maintain their confidence level and assure everyone else that setbacks are natural and we can learn from our mistakes so it does not happen again. If the leader radiates confidence, his or her team is bound to be confident too. You know what they say, "confidence is contagious".

3. Communication – In team-oriented activities and games, communication is one of the main keys to success and this goes the same for business. Good leaders also ensure that information is up-to-date and complete for every employee, so that there can be no confusion.  Leaders should develop clear and concise communication between themselves and their employees - this will help in relating your vision to your team so everyone will be working towards the same goal.

4. Being decisive – Many leaders will come across situations where they have to be decisive; where making decisions in a split second is second nature to them.  Once you make a decision, stick with it unless you have a compelling reason to change it. These decisions should be firm and authoritative despite knowing not everyone will like it because a good leader acts on what is best for the organisation. When you make a mistake, go back to number 1. and be sure that the learning is known.

5. Ability to inspire – At the end of the day, many leaders are seen as truly inspiring people that communicate clearly and motivate everyone to do their best all the time. Inspirational leaders clear the organisational roadblocks that hold back the natural creativity and positive energy of their employees, building a clearer pathway to success for employees and the organisation.  A great example of inspiration is when Steve Jobs stole a CEO from Pepsi with one question, “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or do you want to change the world?”  Being inspiring also means showing people the big picture and dissolving the narrow focus that limits the potential of an individual.

No matter what kind of organisation or association you are in, there will be a leader to take control and lead the team. So be sure to review on these 5 qualities whenever you're unsure or need to push your team into new challenges.

Using leadership to attract the best…and keep them

One of the most frustrating aspects organisations face in recruitment is the risk taken in hiring someone, who for some reason or another, is not a good fit and soon leaves the organisation. So how can this be prevented? The key lies in optimising your hiring steps to not only attract the best candidate for the role, but also to ensure they stay on board and remain active participants that contribute to your organisation’s goals. We will show you how you can actively utilise some of these strategies with leadership qualities in mind, so that as an employer you can attract (and keep!) the best talent.

Attracting the best through your job description and screening

Consider the thought process of a talented candidate on the hunt for a new job; they scroll through hundreds of job vacancies only to see the same, dull outline of a position. These organisations in no way reveal any incentive or passion for this prospective employee. However, you can change that.  The best way to ensure the right people are applying for your position vacancy is to perform the ‘screening out’ process. For example:

Rather than focusing on clarifying that the requirements for the position vacancy you have is for someone who possesses “5 years experience” and a degree in your respective field, it might be more advantageous if your advertisement conveyed the following, “Use your degree and professional training to work within a highly trained team to provide an elite level of service, as well as focus on your individual career development.” This will certainly draw higher quality seekers to your campaign.

Encouraging the top candidates through the interview process

When planning to process potential employees onto the next phase of hiring, make it a priority to approach each candidate with the following thoughts in mind: “How will I be offering the candidate a CAREER, rather than simply a job within this organisation?” and, “Can our team values and vision translate to their own values and strengths?”. That way you can ensure that the candidate selected is a good fit culturally, possesses adequate knowledge and competencies to fulfil the position, and also can be a valuable asset that is focused on their own development pathway.

Keeping successful candidates through effective leadership

It widely known that job satisfaction and engagement of employees are imperatives for the success of not only individual productivity, but also the organisation’s as a whole. Recently, a study known as Project Oxygen was initiated by Google and endeavoured to identify what made leaders within their organisation the most effective; and the results, although very straight forward, can be applied to any leader in any workplace.

  

The key strategies effective leaders need:

• Identify a clear vision and strategy for their team 
•  Provide employees with a career, not simply a job 
•  Be goal-oriented and productive

To shift the type of candidates who apply for your next job vacancy, it is imperative to move away from the traditional job descriptions, emphasising the minimum skills required, and a focus on describing compelling career opportunities to hire effective team players who are competent, motivated and excited about their career. After that, employing key leadership strategies will ensure these top candidates will remain engaged and dynamic participants of your team.

Are you utilising clear and efficient screening practices?

Core hiring metrics such as time to hire and retention can be significantly improved by using innovative online screening systems. Psych Press’ Voice Advantage allows you to quickly identify the true voice of the talent you need by pre-recording interview questions, and then allowing you to review the best video or audio responses in your own time. Our psychologists can also work with you to generate an online screening system to filter out unqualified candidates then create behavioural styled interviews for only top candidates to use.
See how Voice Advantage works.

Happy hiring!

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/business/13hire.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0