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Younger employees require different strategies for keeping them engaged.
When department manager Debra McAllister unexpectedly received a resignation letter from Robert, a young member of her quality assurance staff, she was truly shocked. She considered the 27-year-old employee as one of the rising stars in her department and foresaw a bright future for this particular young man, even though he was a millennial.
Her 15-person staff was responsible for tracking customer satisfaction surveys, focus group research, and shopping reports for a 200-store retail chain located in the Midwest. Their reports helped upper management make vital decisions about recruiting, managing, and promoting store personnel. As a large portion of the retail chain's customers were also young adults, McAllister felt it was important to include millennial employees on her staff. She believed their insights into the shopping patterns of like-minded millennials could serve as a real asset to the chain's management.
Similar to many supervisors, however, McAllister (a baby boomer herself) often felt frustrated supervising millennials. It could be difficult to relate to them, and they were unexpectedly "touchy" at times. McAllister, however, took pains to give her millennial employees plenty of positive reinforcement and opportunities to make a bigger contribution.
So, when Robert explained that he was leaving to take a job where he would be "truly appreciated," McAllister was dumbfounded. She was certain that she had let Robert know how much he was appreciated! Where had she gone wrong?
The Challenge of Managing Millennials
Actually, McAllister was probably an effective manager whose confidence in her staff was deeply appreciated by most of her employees. To be sure, her senior staff never seemed to require a lot of handholding. McAllister found that she could usually counsel her World War II-era and baby boomer employees on how to improve performance without much fanfare.
Her millennials, on the other hand, including Robert, preferred more intense discussions. What confounded McAllister even more was the endless craving for feedback that her millennials desired. It seemed that no matter how much feedback and positive reinforcement she provided, they expected even more.
The risk, of course, was that if her millennial employees didn't receive a sufficient...