Are You Alienating Your Millennials?

Alienating employees, especially when managing millennials, is a surefire way to lose valuable talent. Employers must understand how to connect with and motivate the millennial workforce to enhance the company culture and inspire employees to invest in their efforts. Pinpoint how your management strategies could be negatively impacting your employees to avoid alienating this growing group of professionals.

Lack of Inspiration

When managing millennials, employers must be keenly aware that this generation wants to believe in something and work hard to achieve their goals. Millennials are socially active, according to a 2011 study by TakePart and TBWA/Worldwide. In fact, your millennial employees believe that they share social responsibility both globally and domestically. Employers who are not involving this generation in efforts to impact the community or promote socially conscious efforts are at risk of losing a large group of hard workers. Instead of taking a lackadaisical approach, get to know this workforce by investigating their definition of success. Millennials are driven by purpose, and when managing millennials, you must make the purpose clear. When employers and managers are well aware of how their employees define success, their ability to inspire and motivate increases.

Adopting a Label

One of the biggest pet peeves of the millennial workforce is when employers label or group them into the category of "millennials." When managing millennials, avoid perpetuating stereotypes. Instead, adjust your management strategies to address each employee individually and uncover the strengths and weaknesses of your workforce that are unrelated to the common myths associated with millennials. Treating this generation as underprepared kids is a surefire way to negatively impact your retention rate. Recognize that younger employees have valuable input to bring to the table to enhance your workforce.

Deliver on Your Promises

Very few millennials set a goal to get rich quickly. In fact, this generation prides themselves on working hard to achieve goals. When managing millennials, supervisors must be a crucial part of fostering these goals. However, if you fail to deliver on your promises, you are likely alienating your staff and run the risk of losing valuable talent. For example, millennials take your word as a qualified promise. If you promise a potential raise or promotion by setting standards that must be met, if you don't deliver when the results are obtained, the millennial workforce fees undervalued. Be realistic when communicating opportunities for advancement or benefits on the job.

The millennial workforce thrives on innovation, loyalty and goal setting. Managing millennials involves setting forth clear-cut standards and expectations so that this generation has something to work toward on the job. Managers who make empty promises, treat millennials as children, or fail to offer inspiration or motivation run the risk of alienating employees, which ultimately impacts employee retention and productivity.

Photo Courtesy of Aaron Roberts at Flickr.com