How many articles about millennials in the workplace have you read or seen in the past few years? If you’re like me, it’s hundreds. But from an employer’s perspective, understanding the topic of millennials at work is critical to the future success of their company. So how can employers maximize millennial engagement to make sure they attract, hire, and retain the largest generation in today’s workforce?

Yes, that’s right. Millennials surpassed all other generations last year to become the largest generational group at work. So understanding millennial professionals and what keeps them engaged at work is important, but it’s also difficult. Many older millennials (people like me in their 30s) don’t exactly identify with a lot of the characterizations of our generation. In fact, some of us don’t realize we’re actually a part of the millennial generation.

But from an employer’s perspective, older millennials are already rising in the ranks and taking on management roles, so losing them is a painful process. How can employers keep millennials of all ages and career stages engaged at work to avoid losing strong talent—and losing the time, energy, and expense it takes to groom and develop that talent?

The Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina (MBA@UNC) recently released a white paper called “Maximizing Millennials in the Workplace.” The authors, Jessica Brack of 2U Inc. and Kip Kelly of UNC Executive Development, dive into topics such as millennials’ professional characteristics and expectations of work, and then get to the heart of the matter: how companies can keep this generation engaged and in their jobs, and examples of what “leading-edge” organizations are already doing.

From this paper, here are three methods companies are using to maximize millennial engagement:

1. Employee Resource Groups for Millennials

Employee resource groups, or ERGs, help specific groups of employees support each other, learn from each other, and help the organization learn more about what they want and need at work in order to be successful and support organizational goals.

For years, these employee-led groups have been formed on the basis of race or ethnicity, location, gender, and other common characteristics, so a millennial ERG makes sense. And that’s what Johnson & Johnson is doing.

According to MBA@UNC’s research, Johnson & Johnson’s program “serves as an educational resource and awareness advocate about millennials’ culture and characteristics, empowers and supports millennials’ professional growth and success, and works to establish relationships between Millennials and all other employees to encourage a deeper understanding of the millennial population.” It’s available for all generations—not just millennials—to join.

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An ERG can offer so much of what millennials say they want from their employers: coaching opportunities, collaboration among workers, and motivation.

2. Flexible Work Options In and Out of the Office

Interestingly, MBA@UNC found that millennials seek flexibility not only in the flexible work options that we tout at FlexJobs so often—telecommuting, flexible scheduling, etc.—but also flexibility in terms of professional development, communication, and their day-to-day lives at work.

• Communication flexibility: “Creating an organizational culture that is flexible and relaxed, has open communication, encourages sharing and innovation and offers flexibility is a good step to keeping millennials engaged.”
• Work flexibility: “A recent Mercer study (in Nekuda, 2011) found that the top three career priorities for millennials were compensation (most millennials graduate from college with an average of $20,000 in debt), flexible work schedules and the opportunity to make a difference.”
• Professional development flexibility: “E-learning opportunities can be on-demand, offering flexibility in terms of when and where millennials participate (a feature millennials highly value), and are extremely cost effective. Employers are increasingly using e-learning to teach introductory concepts like business basics or sales techniques.”

3. A Novel Idea: Ask Millennials at Your Company

One of the best approaches may be to stop guessing about what millennials want or need, and start involving them in the process of recruitment and retention.

General Electric – GE created a team of 21 millennial employees from different business units to help them “identify ways to attract, develop and retain millennial talent.” Over a three-month period, this team came up with several novel and actionable ideas for GE to use:

• Use gaming technology to educate prospective employees about the company’s values.
• Create a personalized suite of benefits that offers more flexibility and choice.
• Enhance performance management systems with new tools to help employees navigate their careers at GE, identify job opportunities at the company, and receive more feedback and coaching.

When millennials, and most professionals, perceive a lack of control over when, where, how, and what they’re working on, they disengage. They look for that control elsewhere—and professionally, that means they start looking for a new job.

But if companies embrace these ideas for millennial employee engagement, they have a chance to retain talented professionals and create a more engaging workplace for employees of all generations.

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Readers, what are you considering for millennial engagement? Share your ideas by leaving a comment!

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