For businesses getting millennials and generation Z workers can be vital to the success of the business as they bring new ideas that are relevant to the table. When recruiting early career talent, many businesses believe that installing a table football or stocking the fridge with beer is enough to attract the best young talent. However what businesses did not expect that the younger generation now have a lot more sophisticated needs and wants when looking for a place of employment. Therefore a few changes to the workplace environment may not be enough to attract the best young talent to your business.
Unlike any other generation, the new young talent are willing to leave their current place of employment in order to find a business that they believe aligns with their values and career goals. Many business owners would say that is a negative as it shows a lack of loyalty, however it can be seen as a good thing. When it comes to employment, the generation Z workers and millennials do not accept mediocrity, striving to get the perfect employment position and that can only benefit your business.
So, the question is how do you keep the younger talent with high employment standards? Here are three suggestions that could benefit your business when it comes to the retention of millennials and generation Z workers.
According to a renowned millennial expert, the number one thing that drives young talent to leave a job is a lack of trust. Young employees expect that the job descriptions they have applied, interviewed and hired for to match the roles that they have to carry out in their daily activities. However many find that this is not the case and that the tasks that they are carrying out on a daily basis are not those that were expected and therefore there is a lack of trust from day one.
Amanda Hammett stated that “when Millennials and Gen Z employees feel they cannot trust what they have been told by their employer, the countdown is on until there are gone”. Hammett suggests that many HR departments are being laboured with task of writing job descriptions for roles which they know very little about and therefore there is a lack of clarity within the recruitment process.
Lieberman suggests that the human need to be social is as basic as the need for food, water and shelter. Regardless of the emerging technologies and trends, generation Zers and millennials are human and therefore they are hardwired just the same as any other generation which means they crave social interaction just like everybody else. This means that they want honest conversation and to know whats going in your life as well as taking an interest in theirs.
This doesn’t mean that you should be scrolling through social media for hours checking what they are doing so that you can have a catch up, instead a conversation in the office other than work is what is most appreciated by young talent and that sense of closeness within the team. When millennials and generation Z workers feel as if they are more than just a number and they are developed within the role, they are far more likely to develop a strong bond with the business and the team, which means that it is less likely that they will leave.
A survey conducted in 2018 by Deloitte found that 43% of millennials and 61% of generation Zers plan to leave their current job role within the next two years. Therefore in order to save you and your business from having to spend time and money training, recruiting and trusting new employees, simply ask what it is that your young talent want out of their position and the skills that they want to develop. This might at first be a slight challenge to accommodate certain requests but adapting to the younger talent will help in the long run in terms of recruitment.
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