As an employee retention speaker and employee retention author, I get the opportunity to talk to a lot of leaders of organizations. It is interesting how the human resource people recognize that many of the millennials that are entering the workforce lack the maturity and problem-solving abilities that enable then to jump right into a job and perform. Combine this with an attitude or entitlement and it is a difficult combination for organizations to deal with. Then I talk with operations leadership and they bemoan what is happening and talk about how it used to be. This shocks me because normally it’s operations people and not staff people that are more pragmatic. I’ve had to be rather blunt and tell them “The past is the past” and to accept it and change how they deal with the millennials.
Employee retention is a real issue that organizations face with the millennials and a major reason is how operations leadership handles them and leads them. The reality…they are different, so it takes a different style of leadership to get through to many of them in order to help them to be successful. This ranges from the growth opportunities you provide, the discipline you take and even the “life coaching” you have to do with some of them. This seems to chafe operations leaders and many are fighting the reality that they are faced with.
As an employee retention trainer, I have faced this reality for the past 8 years as it came on gradually. I realized that this generation had to be led with C.R.A.P. (Caring, Respect, Appreciation, and Praise) and adapted to accordingly. When I hear an HR Manager say that a supervisor is an “old supervisor” and then they tell me that the supervisor is 42, I simply cringe. You better wake up and get them retrained because you’ve got a supervisor that you will have with you for another 23 years. How much damage do you want to inflict on the organization by not getting them the training they need and then have them change how they lead?
If organizations refuse to act on the fact that things are different, their ability to stop their employee turnover is never going to happen, and they WILL find their bottom line impacted and perhaps their future survival threatened. Let’s stop kidding our self. Things are different, and we need to make adjustments NOW. It is time to realize that the past is the past!
