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.

Six Management Practices That Can Boost Employee Productivity

Close your eyes and imagine a world where all your employees could work at their full performance capacity, for every minute of every day. A world where your staff don’t steal glances at the clock every minute, and where they aren't taking their 10th coffee break within the hour.

Here are six tips to help boost employee productivity:

Understand your employee

Why is it they come to work? How should you communicate with them? Do they like to receive praise publicly or privately? How do they like to be rewarded, and how do they respond best to feedback? Understanding your employees on a more personal level means that you can cater tasks, feedback and incentives to boost their morale and improve their productivity

Carefully structured incentives 

As a general rule of thumb, a manager or director of a company shouldn’t expect an employee to work for the sole success of the enterprise. Employees may come for social gratification, financial stability, and a whole host of other reasons. When a task is seen to solely benefit senior levels, it will see junior level staff becoming unmotivated to reach the same goals to the best of their abilities. Employees must see worthy and valuable benefits and rewards of completing goals. This means that management should conduct motivation tests to understand the drive behind why employees come to work every day, and reward the team equal to their contribution and according to their desires.

Constantly providing meaningful and constructive feedback

Feedback systems should be implemented, and performance evaluation tests should be regularly conducted to identify talent gaps or to identify where employees excel.

Adequate training

From conducting feedback tests, management should employ talent management tools to improve staff in required areas. Employees who receive complimentary courses or trainings will feel that management is invested in their success and talent – whilst management benefits through their improved skill set and morale.

Personalising the job

Employees all work in different ways – and giving individuals the wrong tools can often cause them to work slowly and more unproductively. Allowing employees’ flexibility in how and when they work – providing that they have a good record of meeting deadlines – can allow them to work at a pace and in a way that is beneficial to both them and the company.

Give credit where it is due

Recognition reinforces good behavior, and allows the employee to realize that their good work has not gone unnoticed. Managers should assume that employees do not realise that they’re doing a good job, and give recognition to show their appreciation for the workers’ efforts.

Performance capacity is largely dictated by management practices, and a manager’s ability to maintain a constant level of motivation through the implementation of performance management activities. So what can you do to boost your employees’ performance?

Boosting employee productivity is not as simple as throwing around some cash. It grows from monitoring and improving your workplace through to understanding the employees, and allowing them to feel the benefits of their hard work. The employees should feel as if they are a valued member of the team.

Tools such as job satisfaction surveys can help you understand your employees, as well as identify what may need changing in your workplace. For more information on job satisfaction surveys, please visit the Psych Press webpage: http://psychpress.com.au/psychometric/talent-retain.asp?job-satisfaction-survey

The recipe for finding effective managers

It is not difficult to fall into the trap of having a poor management team. All it takes is one manager to leave their position and they are either not replaced or replaced too quickly by the closest fit that is far from ideal. You are then hit with a terrifying surprise; your profits are falling, your employees’ overall performance is dropping dramatically and employee turn-over has reached a new high. So if you ever catch yourself wondering where it all went wrong… it may have something to do with the managers you hired, or didn't hire. Research has shown that the number one reason that employees leave their job is ineffective management. It has also been shown that employee satisfaction and performance are directly linked to effective management.

Let’s take a ride in Dr. Emmett Brown’s Delorian. All the way back to your management selection process, what did you do? You picked potential candidates based on their performance, right? You conducted interviews and sorted through candidates until you found one who answered all your questions correctly. But how much does this actually tell you about how effective they are as a manager? If an applicant vying for a managerial role has gone through a number of interviews, then they’d probably be relatively well versed in answering questions correctly.

Let’s say you, as the interviewer, asked your candidate how they would approach a workplace dispute. If they’re well prepared, they've probably read the workplace manual and will pass that question and any other questions relating to workplace protocol and procedures with flying colours. However, this only tells you that they've done their homework. It doesn't tell you how effective they would be as a manager.

And here is your dilemma, you've selected a candidate who has performed well as an employee and has answered in all the right ways, and your profit margins, employee performance has fallen, and employee turn-over…well...

But wait! Don’t kick yourself, you’re not the only employer to find themselves in this predicament. In fact, it’s quite common. What’s important is understanding what makes a good manager and how to find them (or make them). Below are some of the attributes that researchers and other employers have discovered that make a good manager:

• Training: Whilst some people are intrinsically good managers whether it be through their openness, communication (especially listening) skills, confidence or their general manner, there are others out there who have the potential but need the training. An investment in on-going training in the short term can have lasting profitability in the long-term. So find a good training program and get all your managers on board!

• Effective mentoring: A manager who is able to mentor their team effectively is able to highlight an employee’s strengths and coach them in improving their weaknesses, in an engaging and respectful manner. Besides increasing employee productivity, this will also enable employees to reach their full potential.

• Character Judgement: One size doesn't fit all, and a good manager knows it. A manager should be able to tailor their managing strategy to each individual under their instruction in a way that promotes their best performance. This is achieved by acknowledging and respecting individual differences and is reflected in an employee’s work performance as a result of increased work satisfaction. Just as not every worker is the same, not every leader is the same, so take each manager’s individual strengths as a sign of the value they can add.

• Effective delegation: A good manager knows they can’t do everything and is aware that another employee may have more knowledge in a particular area than themselves. To delegate effectively means to lose total control. This takes trust, respect and confidence in an employee’s abilities. So, using effective delegation skills, a good manager can assign the right tasks to the right employee based on what they know about each individual’s strengths, knowledge and skills.

• Outstanding communication: This doesn't just mean telling. It means listening with intent and genuine consideration, and keeping an open forum with all employees. Creating a respectful and committed communicative environment increases employee self-worth, and confidence within their manager. Again leading to increased workplace satisfaction and productivity.

Given that all of the preceding qualities lead to increase workplace satisfaction, who would WANT to leave their job? And given that increased workplace satisfaction leads to increased profit, why WOULDN'T you want to invest in finding a good manager?

So how do you find these qualities? There are a few ways that have been shown to blow traditional ‘resume read and interview’ methods out of the water:

1. Employ a personality screening test, such as the Business Personality Reflections assessment
2. Collect non-identifiable employee peer reviews and performance reports for potential candidates
3. If you work closely with your employees and managers, think critically about your options. Take note of those employees who standout as potential promotion material based on your observations of their qualities.
4. But most of all, don’t just rely on the textbook answers of a standard interview process.

So next time you’re preparing to fill a management role remember:

Effective management = Maximum profit!!

Want to discuss your intake methods? Speak to an organisational psychologist at 03 9670 0590 or info@psychpress.com.au for a confidential discussion regarding your needs and challenges in the world of leadership recruitment and development.