Hiring millennials

The 3 Job Aspects That Will Attract and Keep Millennials at Your Company

Recruiting and retaining Generation Y employees is serious business. The cost of their turnover is high — replacing one employee of this generation is $24,000 on average. Given that Millennials will comprise the majority of the world’s workforce in 10 years, if there was ever a time to pay attention to Millennial engagement, that time is now.

Robust employee engagement is critical to corporate success. Quantum Workplace, an employee survey company, found that businesses with the best engagement programs see a 16% increase in profitability over those that don’t.

Here are the three job aspects your company should offer millennials in order to recruit and retain them:

1. Engaging Workplace

Generation Y is an always-on generation. Growing up with hyper-personalized technological experiences (think: the advent and growth of Myspace and Facebook in the early 2000’s), they are accustomed to receiving a running commentary on their lives. Fostering an engaging workplace is crucial to holding their attention.

What to Do:

  • Annually survey staff on the company’s culture and values. Ask your team how they’d like to be engaged. Would they like more flex time? Fewer meetings? More performance reviews? Tally results, communicate them back to employees, and provide examples of how your company plans to incorporate this feedback into employees’ day-to-day lives.

2. Purposeful Work

When looking at what’s most important to Millennials, RealizedWorth found they value flexibility, corporate citizenship, and corporate culture equally (about 30% each). Salary is, in fact, not as important to the generation—given that it’s reasonable and competitive—and it’s not as important to other generations too. When Net Impact interviewed Millennial, Gen X, and Baby Boomer employees, they found that employees of all generations who felt they held “impact” jobs were two times more satisfied at work.

What to Do:

  • Define what impact means. While everyone may have their share of boring day-to-day work, menial tasks, and tedious reporting, if you can show employees how their work contributes to the company’s overall success, you insert a level of awareness.
  • Embed cause into your company’s DNA. Not all jobs are inherently impactful. However, when your company demonstrates how employees’ work relates to the company’s corporate social responsibility goals and mission, people gain a sense of understanding as to why companies support certain causes.

3. Giving Back

Taking purposeful work a step further, give your employees the opportunity to give back. Why? They want to!

A Waggener Edstrom and Georgetown University study on active cause supporters and active social media participants found that when asked about which is the most important resource an individual can give to charity, respondents split answers equally between donations and volunteering. These highly social individuals will spread the news of your company’s generosity far and wide—empower them to share that message.

What to Do:

  • Think like HP, and reward all-star employees with charity. Your workforce will be more motivated to do top-notch work, and they’ll feel good about paying it forward too.
  • Organize one-off and recurring volunteering projects. Give employees half or full days to participate at the charity of their choice. Require participating employees to answer a few questions about the experience, and post them on your company’s intranet or blog.

If you are looking for more tips and tricks to recruit and retain top talent, download Network for Good’s newest free eGuide on Engaging Millennial Employees.

* image by itupictures

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