Employment. Young and restless: How to engage the millennial generation
Millennials are quickly gaining a big presence in the workplace. As with earlier generations, millennials enter employment with different motivations, technological skills and expectations about their job.
Employers have been forced to confront this new set of issues raised by millennial employees. For those employers that have resisted management inertia, and even those that haven’t, the issues are evolving and demanding employers’ attention. The benefits to be gained from an engaged millennial workforce are significant.
Who are they?
The millennial generation, also referred to as Generation Y, are those individuals born in the range of 1982-2000. In contrast to baby boomers that have thrived in large organizations with layers of hierarchy and long at-work hours, millennials characteristically seek teamwork opportunities and flat management structures, as well as flexible work-life balance.
To understand the typical employment needs and wants of a millennial, take a look to see how a successful company has created an environment and culture that welcomes and maximizes their ambitions.
The Nerdery, an interactive web development company and one of Minnesota’s own, has embraced the millennial generation and witnessed striking gains from it. Tom O’Neill, chief operating officer, explains The Nerdery’s core values and principles attract the millennial generation. This is highlighted by the Nerdery’s belief that all of its employees are “co-presidents” at the company.
From a management standpoint, O’Neill explains The Nerdery handles projects with a team-based focus that allows employees (many or most of whom are millennials) to be involved in a collaborative group environment. It also provides frequent accolades and companywide recognition to employees for their achievements.
The Nerdery touts a schedule that encourages work-life balance. Employees can select a core set of hours when they will be at work—facilitating team interactions—and then the employee can finish their work at a different time that day, or even remotely. O’Neill maintains if not for the purposeful implementation of this culture and practice, The Nerdery would likely face higher millennial employment turnover, lack of employee satisfaction and decreased productivity.
Now for the issues
The legal issues arising in the new era are grouped under two broad categories: technology/social media utilization and employment mobility. Each category has multiple layers of legal issues.
Integrating technology and social media into employment is significant for millennials. They are more technologically sophisticated and likely to incorporate modern mobile computing into the workplace. These skills are useful and can offer significant advantages to the company, if used properly.
However, technology can quickly become a liability when the employee utilizes a personal phone or tablet for work (known as BYOD or Bring Your Own Device) and later leaves the company. Without proper polices and safeguards in place, the former employee may have unfettered access to confidential electronic information that could cause harm in the hands of a competitor.
Likewise, virtually every company now has an internet and social media presence in which millennial employees often play a leading role. Companies are quick to capitalize on the millennials’ technological skills, but must manage digital diversions that sap efficiency—browsing, tweeting and texting about non-work related matters. Employers also face the issue of who owns the Twitter or internet username/handle, and what happens to it after an employee leaves the employer.
Millennials are also thought to have limited interest in staying with an employer for an extended time. In addition to the costs to the employer of having to hire and train replacements (all the more reason to focus on retaining millennials), an employer faces potential issues with having an employee go to a competitor with knowledge of confidential information.
It is increasingly easy with the expansion of technology for employees to have electronic access to the company’s confidential information during their employment. These issues could create significant harm to the employer and require costly litigation.
Polices and plans
While no policy can address every variation of an issue, the following guidelines provide a starting point for an employer to consider in order to protect the company from possible millennial employment issues:
- Wage/hour: Address when a non-exempt employee working remotely is on-the-clock, and implement systems for monitoring accrued time.
- Technology: Address the fact that the employer owns all company electronic data on an employee’s phone, tablet and computer and that the company can require it be returned and wiped after ending the employment; implement confidentiality agreements that limit the employee from using information outside of original employment
- Social media presence: Develop a social media policy and consider issues of whether ownership of all social media handles/usernames used for and on behalf of the employer are owned by the employer.
- Solicitation/competition: Consider non-solicitation agreements and/or non-competition agreements to protect the company’s client and potential client relationships, and confidential/trade-secret information.
- Social media/web: Provide clear guidelines on when time on social media/online is compensable, even if an online presence is part of job responsibilities.
- The cloud: Consider implementing data filing/organization system that is cloud-based so even work performed remotely remains stored in the cloud, and not on PCs, tablets, iPhones, etc.
There is no question that millennials will bring significant change as the latest wave of employees to sweep through the workforce. The only question is whether businesses will be prepared for the change, or instead lag behind and lose opportunities.
