If you're a business run by Gen Xs or baby boomers, it's imperative to understand this and adjust your management style and company practices and offerings accordingly.

Work-life balance – flexibility, fewer working hours and a well-rounded life are more important than pay and pace of promotion according to the millennial workforce.

Millennial challenges in the workplace

It's expected that in 2020:

  • most baby boomers will have retired

  • Generation Y will comprise 42% of the workforce

  • average job tenure will be around three years (currently four years).

As millennials ascend into management positions, they'll become leaders in business. This makes it imperative to do everything possible to engage and retain good millennials.

This is difficult, however, because millennials' expectations and needs are quite different from those of Gen Xs and baby boomers.

According to Australian social researcher Mark McCrindle, "Generation Y has a reputation for being the 'selfie society', infatuated with themselves, their smartphones, social media, and celebrities. 

"However, their expertise in the harnessing of technology, coupled with an entrepreneurial spirit, could be an explanation for their ascent in the world at a rate faster than any other generation before them.

Millennials seek leadership opportunities, and desire to create jobs for themselves, rather than looking for a job. Generation Y don’t need a job for survival and security reasons.

The traditional career trajectory no longer exists. Millennials seek constant connection and dynamism and leapfrog from one business, and job, to another. This makes it difficult to retain as long-term employees.

Millennials tend to be uncomfortable with rigid corporate structures and averse to information silos. They expect rapid progression, a varied and interesting career, and constant feedback.

This makes it more difficult for businesses whose management style and cultures are entrenched in more traditional styles and structures.

Overcoming millennial generation challenges

Millennial work habits are rapidly changing workplace practices. How can you best approach this challenge?

1. Consider your existing workplace practices and the culture of the business through millennials’ eyes. Do your strategies and culture fit their mindset and values?

2. Do you provide them with respect and individual autonomy? Millennials prefer self-sufficiency and independence.

3. Do you enable work-life balance – flexibility, fewer working hours and a well-rounded life? These are arguably more important than pay and pace of promotion.

4. Do you have the tools and technologies to attract and retain millennials? They’ve only known a digital workplace, and are used to being able to leverage that power and information themselves.

5. Do you run a transparent organisation with clear and free-flowing communication and easy access to the information they need? Millennials are used to over-abundance and easy access to any information they crave.

6. Is your workplace culture collaborative? Do you include millennials in the thinking, acting, learning, and decision-making at all levels of the organisation?

7. Do you provide opportunities for constant growth? Millennials constantly seek learning and growth opportunities.

8. Do you acknowledge their achievements, and recognise their contributions? It’s important that they enjoy what they do and find meaning in their work.

Use millennial work values to inform your practices 

  • Acknowledge them for their thoughts, ideas, contributions and achievements.

  • Aim to lead them rather than manage them.

  • Allow them to contribute on important issues and in the bigger discussions, including the decision-making process, and developing concepts and strategies.

  • Communicate openly and transparently and keep them in the loop.

  • Create a flexible workspace and arrangements that enables innovation, growth, exploration, and the ability to be heard.   

  • Encourage a collaborative workplace culture.

  • Encourage employees to discover their interests and abilities and consider how they want to develop professionally.

  • Give them the autonomy to work in their own independent style and pace.

  • Identify employees’ strengths. Match individual strengths to development opportunities.

  • Provide the technology, resources, tools and support they need.

  • Make training or learning platforms mobile-friendly.

  • Provide work schedules that are flexible and promote the millennial work-life balance they crave.

  • Reward the quality and value of the work done.

  • Support their interests in personal development and part-time study.