A study by the Employee MarketPlace has shown that over 50 per cent of millennials make up majority of the employees in Nigeria’s banking sector. The report went further to predict that the millennials would constitute 72 per cent of global workforce by 2025.
Leading millennial employees often leaves managers perplexed as to how to motivate, engage, and optimize the performance of this well- educated, tech-savvy, and diverse generation.
In many cases, millennials are not understood and their reputations frequently precede them. Others frequently view them as disloyal, lazy, and disrespectful workers. This creates misperceptions and biases, which influences the way managers work with them.
“Millennials are just like any other generation: they want to feel secure, they want to be trusted, they want to be liked”
The keys to successfully engaging the millennial workforce are not much different from past generations – respect the things people care about. Understanding what millennials value and connecting those values to their jobs goes a long way to keeping them engaged, productive, and motivated.
Managers can set up millennials to sail and be productive by building an environment that focuses on the following areas, according to HR Insights:
- Social Consciousness – support millennials accessing company resources or taking time to help people within their communities who are in need.
- Ambition – develop clear career paths with short and long term rewards and opportunities for recognition.
- Competitive Salary – This is a distinct motivator that brings out the best performance in millennials.
- Immediacy – provide frequent encouragement and balanced feedback to help millennials know what is expected and understand how they are doing.
- Learning – facilitate multiple learning opportunities for them to develop new skills, via training, coaching, mentoring, on the job learning, etc.
Image: Motivating Africa
