Andrea Knies

Assistant Director, Career Services

Andrea.knies@hotmail.com

As a pioneering Millennial in the workplace, I often find myself defending our generation. We are sometimes labeled as entitled and lazy with a short attention span. It is important to look at where these ideas stem from and then take advantage of this knowledge to maximize the talents of our generation.

The Entitled Generation
This idea is based on the ‘participation award’ idea. It is true that my generation was put on a team (or 2 or 3) at a young age. The stereotype comes from the idea that we didn’t have to compete to win, everyone got a trophy for participating. With this mindset it is no wonder other generations assume we expect recognition for everything.  The truth is we do tend to appreciate recognition, but not for everything. We want to know when we have done things right to provide a benchmark as we learn. And I admit we do tend to contribute our ideas right away. That’s because good teams need lots of ideas from all members. Take advantage of the fact that we like to work on a team.

The Lack of Work Ethic
Our generation has never known a world that is not connected. We can track down information in a heartbeat and we can do it from anywhere. I understand that there was a point in which it was important to physically be in the office in order to have the tools to perform your job. But now with Blackberries and remote desktops we can work from anywhere.  The speed in which Millennials work combined with our ability to quickly track information allows us to perform work tasks in a way that is often mistaken as lazy. Just because we leave at 5 instead of staying late to “pay our dues” does not mean that we are not completing our work. And chances are that we are keeping up on email even if we are on the beach. Speaking of the beach, our work life balance is a justified reaction to watching generations before us work doggedly for retirement only to find it doesn’t exist. So do not assume we are lazy and judge us on the end result rather than the time spent in our chair.

Short Attention Span
Another common trait that is placed on Millennials is that we have a lack of attention. This seems to stem from the fact that we do not view our careers as being connected to a company. We view career at a higher level and although we will change jobs many times in our career it is not because we get antsy, it is because we are following the best fit. One way to combat this is to truly understand the career goals of your Millennial employees. Then be sure to take advantage of this by providing them opportunities to grow within your company or connect them with jobs that they could do on the side.

As with all generational generalities, there are exceptions to these rules. But try not to stereotype your Millennial employee. Instead capitalize on the things that have formed our generation. Oh and don’t judge me based on my tattoo.

In earlier generations of workers, an unspoken, sink-or-swim approach to on-the-job training was often good enough to bring new employees up to speed. Yet that approach might be less effective with those from the Millennial or Generation Y demographic, a group raised with different expectations and work styles.

Millennials, possibly more than any other generation, require clear direction, guidance and goals from their managers. This is because many Millennials have grown up in schools that use rubrics to evaluate the quality of an assignment. According to the National Education Association (NEA) web site, rubrics are “scoring tools that divide an assignment into its component parts and objectives, and provide a description of what constitutes acceptable and unacceptable levels of performance for each part.” In many cases rubrics are provided to students at the time an assignment is given so they know exactly what to do to achieve a certain grade.

Most Millennials are used to well-defined assignments, clear benchmarks and continual feedback and discussion. As such, it is the process they assume will be in place in the business world. The lack of success many companies have experienced in working with Millennials is the result of a collision between this generation’s worldview and how most company’s function.

A New Approach

To leverage the talents of this highly educated and goal-oriented generation, companies need a new approach. Rather than assuming that new workers will absorb an organization’s culture without explicit discussion and while proceeding just as their elders have done, enlightened companies are re-designing supervisor and leadership training to accommodate the more interactive and collaborative work styles of Millennials.

Managers would be well served to understand that the young members of their workforce will place more immediate demands on them than managers likely placed on their mentors. This means that managers must be prepared to spend as much time describing the task an employee is expected to complete as they spend explaining proper business behavior, such as cell phone and Internet use at work.

The new training paradigm must connect the dots for Millennials, who thrive on certainty and clarity. For many, ambiguity is not part of their immediate skill set, in part because this generation grew up playing video games with static rules.