Managing Millennials Gen Y – By Dr. John Drozdal
If You're a Boomer, You May Be Proud of How You Learned Technology Early On in the 80s . . . If You're a Member of Generation Y Born in the '90s, You May Be Wondering How They Can Be So Slow

According to an Economist Business Unit study (http://www.tinyurl.com/m3475k), 75% of the companies surveyed believe that within the next three years they will need a specific strategy to identify, recruit, and retain Gen Y employees. Yet, only 32% currently have such a strategy in place. This article focuses on retaining Gen Y or Millennial employees. Specifically it answers the question: How do you manage Gen Y direct reports to help them become highly successful within your organization?  

However, here is the warning. If you are a manager who complains about this generation of flip flops, nose studs, and tattoos, believes the media that has labeled this group as entitled and narcissistic, and seeks advice on how to “fix” these youngest workers, stop reading this article. Most likely your twenty-something direct reports will talk about you on http://www.badbossology.com.  However, if you want your Millennial employees to be the best they can be, then read on. 

Check out the Dream Come True, taking people from poverty to possibility.

First of all, I have long maintained that every employee - regardless of their generational membership or place within the organization - wants to know four things: 

1.  What’s expected of me? Everyone wants and needs to know their objectives and what success looks like.  Employees also want to know the job requirements - the factors that are essential to getting those objectives accomplished.

2.  How are you going to provide work direction, i.e., manage me? The answer to this question sets the boundaries for how the manager will relate to the employee.

3.  How am I doing?  This question refers to the frequency and mode of feedback to the employee concerning how well that person is meeting the objectives and job requirements.

4.  How will you help me develop? Most employees - and especially Gen Y direct reports are interested in opportunities for development and learning. 

So here are some suggestions for addressing these four questions with a Gen Y direct report: 

1. Addressing job expectations (i.e., objectives, business results and requirements) begins during the INTERVIEW process. Many companies are so eager to hire a talented Millennial that they will sugar coat, dance around, or not even mention some aspects of the job. Better to be clear right from the start rather then have the employee discover it after they arrive. 

For example, if the job requires occasional evening and weekend duties, say that directly. This is the time to talk about being on time, meeting deadlines, his/her role in decision-making and so on. And you have to be very clear about how you will evaluate the employee’s performance, and adherence to any other job requirements. And again, remember we are talking about requirements, not things that are your preferences, or for your convenience, or something that has been traditionally done - like the new person always having to work holidays.

2. If you go to blogs like www.brazencareerist.com you will find that Millennials really do want to be managed.  However, what they want from a manager is someone who is more of a mentor than a boss who issues orders and metes out rewards or punishments. This generation has a close relationship with their parents whom they respect. They seek something similar from a boss. 

Now I am not necessarily talking about an in loco parentis role for the boss.  What I am talking about is teaching the Gen Y employee what they need to know to do their job, coaching them about the world of work, and helping them understand what success looks like. Talk to them specifically about how their work contributes to the business results of the organization. Managing Millennials will take more time than you may be used to. However, if you invest the time to do this, it will pay huge dividends later.

3.Millennials generally want feedback early and often.  The norm for most organizations is that no news is good news and feedback once a year in the performance appraisal process is just fine.  If you follow that practice with Millennials you will be spending most of your time dealing with high turnover.  My suggestion is simple. Sit down with your Gen Y employee and ask him or her what good feedback looks like for them and then contract with them to provide it.  And as a rule, many Millennials have a hard time with negative feedback.  So instead of telling them what’s wrong, tell them what you want to see from them the next time around.

4.Finally, Gen Y loves to learn.  So talk to them about how and what they need to do to develop.  Provide them with increasing levels of responsibility.  Give them opportunities to learn new skills. And when they come to you and say they think they are ready for a promotion and you disagree, help them understand what needs to be present for them to be able to handle the next level, and commit to helping them build those skills. 

And here is an additional tip. Prepare yourself for the reality that Millennials will often challenge traditional workplace rules as well as the “we’ve always done it this way” mentality. If your organization is like most, you may have policies and procedures in place that served a purpose when they were created decades ago, but may now need some updating or purging.  So be open to the observations and recommendation of your Gen Y employees.

 The sobering fact of organizational life is that between 60 to 80 percent of employees who leave, do so for reasons related to a bad boss.  Gen Y would rather live at home with their parents and have no job then work for someone they consider a bad manager.  And in their minds, a bad manager is someone who doesn’t manage them.

Interview with Dr. John Drozdal
(Continued from the Right Column)

BizWatch: Why can't Gen Y just grow up and learn how to fit in like the rest of us did?

Drozdal: Each generation is raised under very different circumstances, and although it's tempting for us to want the new generations to share our point of view and conform, they really are from a different era from our own. In a successful organization, we work with teams to help them understand how the generations can successfully work together. Each generation needs to remember that it was once the "new kid on the block".
 

* MBTI is a registered trademark of CPP, Inn.