It’s well known millennial employees can have unrealistically high expectations at work. One of the best things you can do is to have a frank and open conversation with them about their careers. Here’s how:
Millennials are those born between 1980 and 2000 into the digital era. It’s well known millennial employees have high expectations for meaningful and fulfilling work, and are eager to receive constructive feedback and get promoted. However, this also means they can have unrealistically high expectations at work. As a result, they can be disengaged quickly if they are not managed appropriately, impacting the turnover rate and talent retention strategy of the organisation. As a manager, it’s not always easy to deal with millennials. One of the best things you can do is to have a frank and open conversation with them about their careers.
This could be a good opportunity for you to understand their personal goals and align these with your organisation’s goals. At the same time, you’ll also be able to identify their skillsets and make effective employee changes if necessary and building trust by engaging with them.
This will ultimately help you identify what your millennial employee needs in order to stay engaged, helping you develop the right environment for them and harness their energy for your organisation’s success. This may be easier, more cost-effective and ultimately more efficient than other initiatives.
1. Organise a 1 on 1 Session With Them About Their Career Aspirations
Understand your millennials’ career aspirations, what they desire from the job, and what their strengths are. Some questions you can ask include:
- What do you feel are your key strengths
- What are your short-term and long-term aspirations?
- What areas or skills would you like to further enhance or develop?
- How do you see your aspirations being met in this organisation?
2. Develop Them to Reach Their Aspirations
Build on your millennials’ strengths through appropriate development opportunities. You can ask them questions such as:
- What actions or steps would help you accomplish your goals?
- What are you willing to do in the next 12 months to get there?
- What are you not willing to do to fulfil your career aspirations?
This helps them to break down their long-term aspirations into smaller milestones, helping them realise that a career is a long-drawn and planned process, and not a mad sprint to the end. After this, you can help them understand the opportunities available for them in the organisation, in line with their long-term aspirations and smaller milestones, and how this can help them meet their career aspirations. Of course, you’ll have to first find out what the career options are!
Such a conversation lets them know you’re listening and are genuinely interested in developing them as an individual. Your interest in them will build trust and a culture of engagement and will go a long way in keeping them engaged and interested to contribute beyond the extra mile.
3. Show How Their Personal Development Will Impact the Organisation
Help your millennials link their personal development to the organisation's development. Be upfront with them and let them know organisations do pursue development in their yearly goals, and that their self-development would impact this.
When done well, development activities can connect each employee’s talents and skills with the organisation’s vision, mission and values. Managers need to explain this to employees as they talk about development actions. Corporate and departmental-level strategies are derived from the organisation’s vision, mission and values. These eventually trickle down to individual goals and the core competencies needed to achieve those goals; which could then become development opportunities if the core competencies aren’t developed yet.
Some questions you can ask to facilitate their thinking are:
- How will you benefit from these development activities? and
- How do you think developing these skills will benefit our organisation?
- What other core competencies do you think you’ll need to be aligned with the work here?
Here at PACE, we believe the company culture should support personal development.
