By 2020, millennials are projected to be by far the largest section of the workforce. This means that you need to understand exactly how to motivate millennials to ensure you are getting the most out of your staff. But getting more from millennials isn’t always achieved in the same way that you would have provided motivation for other generations. Here we look at five unexpected ways you can motivate your millennial staff.
- Encourage the team to bond
One of the best ways to motivate your staff is to get them to work for each other. You should plan staff days out and fun things for the team to do together so that there is a great atmosphere between the members of the team. Some companies organise staff workshops or training days to try to help the team bond while also learning in a practical setting. This can be effective, but it can be even better to simply raise morale and improve levels of cohesion in the team by organising fun experience days like these at UK provider Into the Bluethat aren’t work related.
Do the research into the range of options available near you, and give the team options to choose from so that they can select an experience that they will all enjoy.
- Go green – become a sustainable business
Recent research from Global Tolerance found that 62 per cent of millennialswant to work for a company that makes a positive impact on the world and 53 per cent would actually work harder if they knew the company was benefitting society. One of the best ways that any company can show that they are committing to high moral standards is to become sustainable and embrace green policies.
There are plenty of ways that you can do this from introducing a cycle-to-work scheme and encouraging recycling to going paper-free.
- Provide feedback regularly
It is interesting to note that for some generations the idea of getting regular feedback on their work was very much unwelcome. And yet, performance analysis is one of the things that millennials crave from their managers. The theory goes that millennials – who have grown up with social media – have grown accustomed to instantaneously feedback on the things they do.
This means that some millennials prefer to be kept up to date with opinions on their performance to gain reinforcement. This is something that you as a business owner or team manager need to prioritise. Book in regularly performance meetings with your millennial staff and give honest feedback, ensuring to praise good work.
- Create in-between job titles
There is something of a myth that millennials are lazy, but nothing could be further from the case. In fact, at work, millennials are very likely to want to push forward and succeed in their chosen job or career. Many millennials face frustration if they have been in a job for a significant period of time without any perceived advancement or development.
This is partly because the limited jobs market millennials have had to work with has meant there are fewer opportunities for progression. But another important factor is that millennials like to display their current job as a status symbol on their social media profiles.
This means that if your company current has a fairly simple management-employee structure, this might not suit millennials. For example, in a marketing business, if there are only three positons (such as: marketing assistant, team leader and marketing manager) this severely limits the opportunities for individuals to progress in their roles. This can be easily remedied by introducing in-between steps that can be used as a reward as a member of staff moves through the company.
For example, you could have job titles such as: junior marketing assistant, marketing assistant, marketing executive, senior marketing executive, and more, providing plenty of space for individuals to progress.
- Promote personal development at work
Some companies worry that if they offer opportunities for personal development and training at work, this will lead to members of staff picking up extra skills which they will then use to get a new job elsewhere – and thus the investment in the individual will be wasted.
However, it is important to understand that when a company puts faith in its employees and provides them with training and chances to grow their skillset, the employee will show loyalty and actually prefer to stay with the company.
