Training: Why the Millennial Generation’s Needs Differ

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.