by: Joanna Gammon | Client Relationship Manager
They're ambitious, they're demanding and they question everything…they’re Generation Y! As a follow up to my post, Generation Y: How to Attract and Retain the New Twenty-Something Professional, I am going to expand on the third recommendation which is "Talk to Them!"
In today’s workplace, it is common to see 50-year olds working right beside 20-year olds. Some of these freshly minted college graduates are even overseeing employees old enough to be their parents, maybe even grandparents. New entrants into the workforce are changing careers faster than college students changing majors. These frequent changes create frustration for employers, with many wondering how it’s possible to retain these young and talented high performers.
"Generation Y is much less likely to respond to the traditional command-and-control type of management still popular in much of today's workforce," says Jordan Kaplan, an associate managerial science professor at Long Island University-Brooklyn in New York. "They've grown up questioning their parents, and now they're questioning their employers.
First and foremost, as an employer, you need to take the appropriate managerial steps in order to train, lead, and develop this generation. Once you have found a comfortable leadership/communication style, you need to implement it on a daily, weekly, monthly basis – whatever works best for your corporate environment.
At Integra, we hold weekly Monday morning meetings. All employees attend, including our CEO, COO, and Accounting Manager. We go around the room and each share 1 professional story and 1 personal story from the past week. It is a great way to catch each other up not only with business matters but also outside activities. I realize that many companies are too large for the whole company to meet and therefore should break into smaller groups of approximately 15-20 people. The meeting should last no more than 30-45 minutes. In addition, on Tuesday thru Thursday we meet in small group for a quick 10 minute catch up on the most recent business affairs. I also meet one-on-one with my manager once a month for a review. During this evaluation session we talk about my activities, goal planning, new ideas, etc. Integra also has an open door policy…our CEO and COO are included in this policy!
What Gen Yer’s want is for you to tell them TODAY how they are doing; not tomorrow, and certainly not one year from now. They want you to personally train them in certain areas and help develop them so that they can be as effective as possible within the organization. They desire interaction and communication with higher level executives. If you want to retain a Generation Y employee, just talk to them!
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