Millennial Employee Retention Strategies
While there are multiple steps you can take as a small business owner to grow your venture, such as concentrating on customer service, developing new products or services, targeting new customer types, and marketing more effectively, the success of your business stems significantly on the quality and engagement of your team members.
To get the results you want from your organization, you must consider how to increase the happiness, productivity, and loyalty of your employees. This is particularly the case for Millennials. These younger staff members need more than just a good wage to stay in their jobs. There are numerous retention strategies you can use this year to help you boost the capacity and engagement of your millennial employees.
Talk with Millennials
It’s wise to talk with millennial team members about what they value most from employers when it comes to being happy in their roles and feeling encouraged to stay. Remember: this generation has grown up at a time when it’s the norm to enjoy customized experiences and a wide variety of choice in products and services. As a result, they don’t enjoy having limited options or being treated like everyone else.
Make your Millennials comfortable and committed by focusing in on who they are as individuals. The methods you choose for showing one young employee they’re valued may differ from those you choose for another, according to their personality, interests, job type, etc. This will reap benefits when it comes to engagement, plus you’ll save some money. Because you will put money into those HR strategies that your Millennials are truly interested in, you won’t waste cash on useless initiatives.
Give Out Awards, Rewards, and Perks
When people work hard in their jobs and are loyal to a company, they want to know their efforts are noticed and appreciated. You can, for example, set up an awards system where you give out professional employee service awards to your best performers and workers. Having an awards ceremony, whether a low-key one amongst a small team or a big affair at a company-wide event, will give your valued team members a time to shine, and show them how important they are to you.
You can also provide your staff members with rewards and perks to make them feel good. For example, give out bottles of wine, gift vouchers, hampers, flowers, chocolates, nights away, movie gift cards, or, whenever possible, individualized, tailored gifts. Occasions for giving could be when employees have achieved great results, worked really hard, celebrated a work anniversary or birthday, or reached some other milestone. You may also want to hand out gifts at Christmas or other holidays.
Perks are helpful, too. For instance, consider giving your employees extras like free lunches, discounted or free childcare, gym access, and other health and wellbeing opportunities, plus better parking, additional time off for holidays, and so on.
Thank and Acknowledge Workers
Of course, something that doesn’t cost you a thing but that can make a huge difference to employee morale is thanking your staff members. Acknowledge their efforts and/or results with a heartfelt, face-to-face thank you wherever possible, or when you don’t get to see people in the flesh, send them a handwritten note, well-thought-out email, or arrange a video chat.
Also, find ways to acknowledge people’s achievements, hard work, and ideas. Give them a shout out in front of the team, on social media, in a company newsletter or intranet update, or at a conference. Try, too, to pay attention to the suggestions your employees make for improvements and projects. When you can implement their ideas, they will feel much more valued and heard.
Give Employees Chances to Grow and Develop
Millennial workers are focused on growing and developing during their careers. As such, look for ways to make this simpler for them. Enable them to move around the business, trying out new jobs and working with different teams. This will allow them to build up their knowledge and skillset, see the business from all angles, and do new things and stave off boredom.
Also, invite workers to attend industry events as business representatives, where they can grow their communication and networking skills, meet new people, and learn about the latest updates in the industry.
Consider giving them the time off for, and potentially paying for, training, too. You could hire motivational speakers or experts on certain topics to speak to your team, or send them off for training courses or higher education opportunities.
Anything you can do to ensure Millennials know they’re part of the team, appreciated, listened to, and valued will help ensure they stay working for you for the long term. The kinds of strategies mentioned above assist with productivity and engagement on the job, so in turn, you’ll find it easier to grow your business.
