Bring on the Millennials!

Citation

Bajer, J. (2015), "Bring on the Millennials!", Strategic HR Review, Vol. 14 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/SHR-06-2015-0053

Bring on the Millennials!

Article Type: Strategic commentary From: Strategic HR Review, Volume 14, Issue 4

Javier Bajer is CEO at Possibilate Ltd, Godalming, Surrey, UK.

There is a possibility that we might have gotten the wrong end of the stick when it comes to the “millennial” debate.

Most organisations have been working very hard to connect with Generation Y newcomers into the workplace. They have built buffers to help them adapt to corporate cultures. They have designed ways for attracting and engaging them, so that they can understand what companies need from them and focus their very dispersed attention on “the way things are done here”.

For most, it has been about making sure that Millennials can “plug into” existing organisational cultures. The mantra goes like this: these young people are very different from us. They have a very different value system, unstructured ways of working and do not engage with the things we do. The solution: to design “interfaces” that would allow Millennials join our workforces, so we can benefit from their creativity and collaboration skills, while not rocking the boat.

However, the writing is on the wall and probably with indelible ink. After many years of trying a wide range of “solutions”, we have not managed to attract, engage and deploy people successfully. And this is not just about the Millennials, but about everyone. We need to acknowledge that this has been happening well before the Millennials showed up on our doorsteps.

Many reports clearly denounce that our way of connecting people with organisations has not worked very well. Based on recent research from Deloitte and Gallup, about 90 per cent of organisations believe they do not have adequate leadership pipelines, 87 per cent of employees do not like going to work everyday, only 6 per cent of organisations think that their performance management processes are worth their time, and almost 80 per cent of HR departments say they still have a serious retention problem. (Gallup, 2013) (Bersin by Deloitte, 2014) (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, 2007).

It might be unfair to point at the Millennials’ arrival as the explanation for our shortcomings. In fact, this new generation might only be bringing to light what has been happening in the workplace for a while.

And here is the good news. What if the Millennials became the solution to the challenges that we have been struggling with for the last few years? What if we could really take their messages, not as problems that need to be resolved, but as opportunities that can help us challenge and change the status quo, adjusting the way in which we attract, engage and support people at work? I believe that the Millennials – and the subsequent generations – are a much-needed wake up call for our HR world.

To practically explore how Millennials could help us shift our practices, let us just look at a couple of examples: the attraction of talent and the creation of a culture of innovation.

The attraction of talent

Most organisations have been saying that they can not get the right people to join their ranks, despite the creative approaches they use to attract them. A lot of thought and effort around attraction focuses on reaching more and more people (i.e. embedding recruitment into social media conversations of all sorts) or on reaching them earlier (i.e. sponsoring events at junior schools to start building “employer brand loyalty”).

The answer, however, is not to widen the spectrum in which we go looking for talent, but to address authentically what engages people to work. The Millennials’ answer to this question is very clear: they are more interested in what they can give, rather than what they can get. Traditionally (and still for many, today) the focus has been on what we get from an organisation if we agreed to sign on the dotted line: flexible hours, healthcare packages, exciting careers, learning and travel opportunities, great perks that made that organisation a “great place to work”, etc. However, most of us (including, but not limited to the Millennials) are more interested in the value that we can add and the knowledge that our work is going to serve some purpose. Of course humans have a need for recognition, but this should not be a cosmetic one. People need to know that they are contributing to something that is worthwhile, useful and, ideally, sustainable – not just accumulate golden stars. Salaries and perks create attachment instead of commitment; for the Millennials (and indeed for everyone else) these are taken as a given, not as the driver.

A culture of innovation

We all want cultures where creative solutions are continuously improving what we do for clients and how we do it. Millennials’ appetite and curiosity for the new and for the better is not at all a consequence of complex processes designed to encourage and reward innovation – it comes “naturally” to them.

Most organisations talk a lot about innovation and incentivise people to come up with new ideas, under the assumption that otherwise they will just not do it. The underlying belief is that people would rather continue to do what they have always done unless we “motivate” them to do otherwise.

When running cognitive interviews inside current workforces, the reasons why people do not want to innovate became obvious. Despite the messages encouraging innovation, we did not see the practices, spaces and flexibility required to support it. In fact, it is very common to find policies, performance management, reward systems and supervisory styles that hinder any attempts for coming up with new and challenging ideas. Progressively, this type of context ends up eroding any chances for innovation in the entire workforce, including the Millennials. Of course, it becomes easier for them to leave the organisation and try their luck elsewhere, while for the rest it will mean to continue being disengaged but employed.

It is time to challenge our HR Strategies, taking the Millennial’s “messages” and using these to seriously review how we connect people with work, not just for the new generations, but for everyone else.

Everyone needs to have a strong sense of purpose for coming to work instead of just focusing on the end of year bonus. But to create that sense of purpose we need to make sure this is not just a PR exercise, but that it becomes the foundation for what the organisation does.

Everyone needs to use their skills to do interesting work, to have space where to make decisions, to be able to administer how and where they work and to be trusted to make the right choices.

We are not that different from the Millennials, actually. We have grown up in different circumstances and got used to the policies and structures than once worked well and served a purpose. Let us turn the page now or, even better, let us start a new chapter. Let us design organisations so that we do not waste so much time worrying about our belly buttons and can finally focus on creating value for society. It is much needed!

References

Bersin by Deloitte (2014), Global Human Capital Trends, Bersin by Deloitte.

Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (2007), Recruitment, Retention and Turnover, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, London.

Gallup (2013), State of the Global Workplace, Gallup, Washington, DC.