What Millennials Look for in a Company
Welcome to the next installment of our Blue Chip Talent Blog Millennial Series. We here at Blue Chip Talent are getting ready to host a professional workshop for our clients/business partners in February about Millennials and how to best understand and motivate them for personal and organizational success.
With that said, we took an informal survey and found out what Millennials really look for in a company:
Respect and Unique Opportunities
While we may not be speaking for ALL workers in our generation, we don't believe there is a secret science behind our professional motivations. Sure, the bells and whistles (i.e. air hockey tables, a yoga room, a vegan vending machine, etc.) might be nice to have, but ultimately those things won’t have us sprinting to the office in the morning. What will prevent us from looking around the job boards after six months or a year will be the two concepts mentioned above: respect and opportunity.
The first concept, respect, doesn’t mean we’re expecting to pull up a desk right next to the CEO. It just means that we want reassurance that our contributions are noted and are making a difference towards something. Whether that something is towards the bottom line, towards improving internal processes, anything. If something we’re doing isn’t what our company or supervisor has in mind, then allow us the latitude to make the necessary fixes to get it in line. Everyone wants to feel useful and included. You can easily make your Millennial employees feel valuable and included by respecting their time, effort, opinions, and contributions.
The second concept, unique opportunities, means that we would like to be afforded the chance to utilize the skills we possess, whether they directly relate to our role or not. For example, let’s say you have an employee who is a very talented graphic designer in their free time. They are your HR Benefits Coordinator and they don’t even sniff the Marketing department during a normal work day. Instead of confining them to their strict role in HR where they must eat, drink, and breathe HR daily, allow them the opportunity to put their skills to use. It can be directly related to their duties: you have them design an HR poster to hang in the employee lounge detailing labor rules or company benefits. The opportunity can also be indirect: they don’t get to produce the designs, but they are HR’s representative to the Marketing department or they sit in on a design taskforce or Marketing project team. Keep your Millennial’s attention and loyalty by giving them unique opportunities to showcase what they’re good at or what they enjoy doing, whether it’s directly tied to their duties or not.
Once again, we may not share the same views of all Millennials, but I believe that if you provide basic respect and opportunities, you’ll have a motivated, passionate, hard-working Millennial on your hands, not the entitled, lazy, unfaithful Millennial the mainstream media tells you that you have.
