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2. They expect their supervisors to take over where their devoted parents have left off.

3. They are the “Trophy Kids” – everybody gets an award whether or not they’ve played!

4. They are not comfortable with conflict, as their parents tried to smooth the road to keep things calm.

5. They are accustomed to structured lives as they have had schedules and daily plans since they were young.

6. They want to know why – they’ve been encouraged to ask questions.

7. They want lots of feedback and coaching.

8. They want transparency and trust. They know how to quickly obtain data and will use their strong social network to find what they are after.

9. They want flexibility in all aspects of their work.

10. They are good collaborators and know how to work on a team.

11. They are risk adverse as they do not have experience failing at something, they don’t know how to navigate when they haven’t been successful.

12. They have tattoos, piercings, etc. and see these as part of their brand.

13. They don’t perceive themselves as entitled, they just expect what they expect.

Managing Millennials the way you were managed, DO UNTO OTHERS, will not allow you to see the results you are after.

To move forward, you need to assess who you lead, where are they in terms of the performance needed for the business, and determine HOW they might benefit from a different approach to being supervised, so you can have highly engaged, motivated, innovative and committed team players.

Education around generations is on par with Leadership style training – when you look through those lenses, you see things differently. No one is asking that you change, or be someone you aren’t.  But when you accommodate, as is often done in successful relationships, you’ll be pleased by the results.

Millennials, those 75 million aged 12-30 who are becoming more and more a part of the workplace bring with them new ideas of work ethic, onsite work time and how technology can streamline processes and procedures. These impatient digital natives bring much more than just tech-savvy. As almost half of them in their twenties live with mom and or dad, they have an enormous personal safety net that allows them to leave a job they hate, without a new job lined up. Twenty-five percent of those working Millennials living independently are still getting some financial help from their families, for student loans, insurance, car payments or spending cash.

Gen X, those who are 31-46 are the smallest generation ever. Though 46 million is a large number, the women in this generation are in their prime child bearing and child rearing years. This “latch-key” group does not want the same single parent experience where the kids were home alone being taught to be skeptical of strangers because mom and dad weren’t home to supervise. Gen Xers are figuring out how to tele-commute, even in professions that have been late adapters to this process or taking on jobs that require less time so they can be hands-on parents, watching every soccer game and participating in school events.

As you assess the talent needs for your team, your department and even your organization here are some questions:

What are you doing to encourage dialogue about how each generation views work?

What have you changed to accommodate how different generations view incentives and motivators?

How are you closing the generation gap to leverage communication?

How can you incorporate multi-generational feedback to improve each generation’s ability to contribute?

Dude, how is communication impacting the people you on your team?

As an HR professional who has studied this generation and developed tools and resources to engage and retain Gen Y, my Millennial optimism comes from: this generations global perspective; their enormous capacity to learn quickly and accomplish tasks quickly; their tech savvy skills; their abilities to collaborate and partner. What is getting in their way are systems such as the traditional annual performance appraisal and the old school way of training and on-boarding new hires by assuming they are to be sponges 100% of the time and just absorb. This generation requires ongoing feedback, not the once a month or once a year system, they want to participate in every step, be it their new hire training or how they can contribute to many different groups in their organization as their vision is boundary less in regards to job content or title.

The long answer is as our “Trophy Kids” as so named by author Ron Alsop; Gen Y’s expect the world of work to pick up where their helicopter parents, doting teachers and coaches have left off.  It’s quite a shock to Millennial new hires to learn that traditional employers have not been waiting for these tech savvy, multi-tasking twenty-something’s to arrive! Our work with clients and research indicates the disconnect occurs at many points of the employee – employer relationship.  One of the key areas we tackle is altering the mindset of more mature employees and supervisors that this is the entitled generation.  This frame of mind is an especially challenging one between Gen Y’s and Gen Xers who did not feel they had the same attention paid to them as they were growing up, which is why they are referred to as the “latch key” generation. Gen Y’s do not perceive themselves as entitled, they just know what they know!

Our clients who are serious about harnessing Millennial potential are looking at ways to retool their recruiting practices to find Millennials where they congregate (Social Networking sites) and are beginning to make changes to the way they onboard and manage performance. Most clients are working on elements of these processes not revamping all processes to make these accommodations. This year, 2011, marks the first year that the oldest of the Baby Boomers will be eligible for Social Security and Medicare. No one is quite sure what the impact will be to companies across America as these 3-4 million Boomer possibly exit. The paradigm shift of the Great Recession is still being felt and those impacts are not yet known.

When looking at an organization through the lens of those born in different eras, it becomes clear that each bring different thoughts, expectations, work habits, and experiences to the job. Getting managers to understand and appreciate those differences can help companies maximize the talents of each demographic.  It’s a natural process to at first oppose that which is not familiar, but in the case of so many Millennials, also known as Gen Y, entering today’s workforce, resisting is the worst possible strategy.

Increasingly, progressive companies are launching enterprise-wide initiatives to address generational diversity because the age range in today’s workforce is unprecedented. It spans from Traditionalists, those born from 1900 to 1945, to Millennials, the generation born between 1981-1999. In 2010, Millennials are just 15% of the workforce and their impact is already being felt, so as the years progress their presence will only increase.

To determine if your company is moving toward being Millennial friendly, it’s important to ask the following questions:

1.   Does your company support partner mentoring? This is a two-way relationship where younger workers are teamed with experienced workers, so they can exchange and share expertise about technology and critical tribal knowledge.  Millennials are not satisfied with being the “mentee.” They want to be full partners and contribute to this mentoring relationship by sharing their expertise rather than the paradigm that mentoring is one way and always provided by the more mature worker.

2.   Does your company help new employees understand the unwritten rules of the road? Millennials have grown up with a different set of boundaries and may not intuitively understand the lines between work and play, or how to treat other employees, customers and clients in a business setting, as differentiating seems odd to this generation.

3.   Does your company cultivate professionalism by clearly defining it? For example, does your company have guidelines describing appropriate professional attire, cell phone use? Have you articulated what it means to be accountable? As members of the Rubric Generation, Millennials respond when they know what “good”, “very good” and “excellent” performance standards include.

4.   Do your employees consider your company transparent? Are they are informed about its mission, goals and objectives? Do they understand how the business works and how all the elements and processes connect?

5. Does your work environment provide opportunities for younger workers to voice their thoughts and suggestions about technology– one of their areas of true expertise and passion? Do you provide an internal Facebook social network model to communicate? Does your company have it’s own wiki – one way to support their need to connect the dots about what the company does, how one department supports another, and how what they do contributes.

By thinking differently about diversity, many companies can unlock the talents of different generations eager to make even greater contributions to the team.

If we take the concept of rating professors and carry it to the workplace, we will have rate my boss! It seems a little crazy that you would be willing to supply info about good or bad bosses, but guess what? It does exist and it’s called  – eBossWatch.com. This site invites to you rate your boss so those considering a career move will have just-in-time data about the great bosses and the ones to avoid. You provide the company name and the name of the good or bad boss so others can be warned. They currently have information about the 25 Worst Bosses of 2009, with names, scenarios and the company name listed. One implication of this data is that as a company, if you don’t respond quickly, it looks bad and as some of the scenarios listed were about hostile workplace issues and harassment, you’re now in violation of employment rights.

As this data becomes so available, what impact will it have on performance? Will Millennials and others utilize this as they change companies and look at opportunities? Could this type of data be the deciding factor in going to work for a company? Will some articulate Millennial say to the recruiter or hiring manager, “I really want to take this position you’re offering, I think the company looks great, but I won’t work for THAT boss because I know he’s difficult, demanding, mean and unfair.” Maybe one of the new world of work negotiating points will be the Millennials selecting who they will work for in the company. Will this transparency create a new dynamic in the workplace? As we continue to recover from the Great Recession and the talent market expands, what impact could the sharing of this judgmental data have on you, your team and your company?

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.

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.

For Millennials/GenYers, fear as a motivator is a somewhat foreign concept. Raised by parents and teachers who sought to build esteem and not threaten, Millennials/GenYers don’t have the built-in fear instinct.  Even if they were to lose their job, their fear factor is lower than other workers’ for two reasons: 1) Millennials have not yet accumulated the financial responsibilities of older workers, 2) Many can return home to the financial safety of their parents until they find another job.

Instead of fear, employers would do better by embracing what Millennials/GenYers really want: Supervision. This doesn’t mean micro-managing, but rather providing support, coaching, information, and patience.  Unlike previous generations, Millennials want and need regular and constant feedback. It’s what they know from their parents, and it was the basis of how they were educated from grade school through college.

Fear leadership is a strategy among managers who haven’t embraced the fact that the workplace has changed radically.  In previous generations, work was mostly done on site. The boss could see you working and could monitor your activities.  The thought was that if you didn’t hear from the boss, everything was okay.

This management style will not motivate the Millennial generation.  Millennials/GenYers were raised as independent, self-starters who can use technology and social media to get the job done irrespective of physical location.  Rather than having someone look over their shoulder, what Millennials really want is clear direction and mentoring. Once they understand the task at hand, they can lock and get it done.

It’s understandable that Baby Boom managers may have a high need for control.  But by understanding the perspective of Millennials/GenYers, it’s possible they can learn a new skill or two that will produce employees who are both loyal and highly effective.

andrea.knies@hotmail.com

As a career counselor I am aware of many factors currently affecting those about to graduate from college. Some of these elements are part of the big picture and faced by everyone. The challenge for the Millennial generation is to identify the obstacles that are within their control.

Technology

Millennials have a great relationship with technology.  It has been a vital part of their entertainment, education, and social lives.  So it is logical that this would be the first place they would reach when they are preparing for the world of work. They Google the word ‘resume’ and are overwhelmed with hits on the subject. However, Google cannot help them sort through to find the most appropriate information for their situation. Unfortunately, this generation is depending on that information instead of seeking out the help of their campus career centers that are there to aid them on this journey.  The second problem that Millennials are having with technology and their job search is the amount of faith they place in large job boards. Many soon to be graduates are using a passive approach to the job search and truly believing that if they place their resume on a large job board that someone is going to find them and offer them a position. This is not the way a job search works, but it is an easy and safe way for the Millennials.

When used correctly Millennials have the talent to create a great job search through technology. They can blog about issues they are passionate about, they can create websites to showcase their work, and they can use social networking to connect with people all over the world. If this generation would take a more proactive approach they can use technology as an effective piece to their job search.

Workplace Shifts

Another problem that Millennials are facing as they enter their professional lives is understanding this shift that has occurred. We have moved from a world where you work as part of a corporation to a world where you are your own corporation. Most Millennials have been raised by parents who have a boss. Their parents found a position within a company and then identified with that role. With the change that the nation is currently undergoing we are moving towards a world in which people will be offering their services and talents and creating their own businesses. This is not a new concept, it is similar to the pre-industrial revolution workforce. However, this is not something that Millennials have seen. They do not understand the concept of building a career around yourself instead of around a company.

There are two things that Millennials can do to help work through this issue. First of all they can start talking to people from older generations. Find those people who started their own company or were on the cutting edge of new trends. Look to those people for inspiration as we begin a new frontier. Another way Millennials can move forward with this shift is by creating their own brand. Millennials have seen brands their entire life. Now is the time to dissect that concept and apply it to building a personal brand. Millennials can then easily use the internet to promote this brand.

Safety Net

It is great to see how close Millennials are to their parents. I myself happily tell my mother everything and look to my parents for advice. However, there is also a downside to this and that is the safety net. When the going gets tough it is very easy for the Millennials to move back home. (When I mention the safety net, I am not referring to collectivist cultures. In cultures when it is customary to move home until beginning your own family those children are expected to work.) The problem with Millennials is that they can move home and play video games without any stigma and their parents welcome them with open arms.

There is nothing wrong with needing some help and I feel that we are a generation lucky enough to have that support. However, the problem is when Millennials abuse the situation. Millennials need to continue to be proactive. Even if they must move home they can still do their own laundry, help with dinner, and continue to look for a job every day.

There are many elements out there that are affecting the workforce, but with a little self examination Millennials can eliminate the obstacles that are within their control.

Andrea Knies

Career Counselor

Millennial