- Millennials have many great benefits they can bring to the workplace
- They also have significant characteristics that are different from previous generations
- Millennials have great devotion to their employer if certain conditions are met
- Millennials focus on completing tasks not on putting in time at the office
- Flexible scheduling is an employee benefit that is greatly attractive to millennials
- Work/Life balance is a big goal of most millennials
- The business that helps millennials have a better work/life balance will get a dedicated employee
Millennials have been the object of jokes, moaning, and groaning by the older generation (my people). It is getting a little tiring to hear about how lazy they are and nothing like the previous generation. Of course, that is coming from the older generation which disapproves of the young crowd.
There are a number of personality traits for millennials but I want to focus on just a couple of significant ones: Task Orientation and Work/life Balance
Task Orientation
Business has been built around time orientation. We work 8-5, Monday thru Friday, take an hour off for lunch, have a coffee break in the morning and another one in the afternoon. Work is not measured in output but in attendance (regardless what management says).
Ever since Henry Ford introduced the 40 hour work week in the 1930’s, we have been stuck in that time warp.
Millennials are in no mood to put up with this silliness. My experience with these employees is that they are not adverse to working long hours. But, they are not going to be kept to a time schedule if there is not a good strong reason.
If they finish their work early, they are in no mood to hang around the office. They have completed their tasks so their work is done!
Keeping them around just to meet a schedule imposed by the company will not work.
Also, they want to be able to pick their work times. Just because one of them is in the office at 6:00 am, don’t expect all millennials to be there at the same time. They will stagger in over the next four hours on a time schedule that fits their life.
Introducing flextime is not a generous benefit to millennials. They are not impressed – It is only common sense and being denied that option will seem stupid to them.
Work/Life Balance
For the previous generations, personal life happened after work was done. Following the depression in the 1930’s, a panic set in that generation that never went away. The fear of not having work was life long. I have had long conversations with people from that generation and it is amazing how driven they were to work and work and work! This group was happy to work 60 hours a week for little pay.
With advances in the standard of living, we have seen since then, the panic of not having a job is greatly diminished.
Now, millennials truly believe there is a need balance work with a fulfilled life and that is not going to change, at least in the near future.
Asking a millennial to work into the evening or on the weekend is still possible. However, they are going to have to get a good reason why this extra effort is needed. In addition, they will be looking for extra time off compensation or some other method of making up for the extra time.
Allowing the millennial to have flextime scheduling, working remotely, and special recognition for their efforts all help promote employee satisfaction with millennials (actually all employees).
One of the most dangerous things a manager utter is the immortal words “You are lucky just to have a job.” Any supervisor that pushes that line just lit their credibility on fire with those words!