Retaining Younger Workers

In a previous article we discussed two ways that you can attract and keep the younger generation. These include adding new and more interesting roles to the job to keep it interesting and show respect to the young person’s abilities, as well as making sure you are treating them in a way that they deserve, ignoring their age and trying your best to avoid anything that can be misconstrued as disrespect. We’ll continue to discuss other ways to attract and keep the younger generation below.

Reconsider the 9 to 5 There have been several articles of late that indicate people are moving from a “40 hours a week” mentality to a “project” mentality. This is spearheaded by the younger generation – a generation that doesn’t believe that working 40 hours a week is as important as doing their job, and doing their job well. For businesses this may be advantageous – those you hire are going to be dedicated to doing their work – but it does mean that coming in at 9 and leaving at 6 has become less important to the younger generation.

They want to work, or they want to be done. You’ll have to consider ways to integrate this into their work. Casual Workplace On a similar vein, you may want to consider turning your workplace into something that is literally more focused on work than anything else.

Meaning that other aspects of traditional jobs – including a fancy dress code, working solely from the office, coming in early when there’s nothing to do in the morning, etc., may need to be reconsidered. Many of those aspects of a person’s career are less necessary these days anyway, so if making your workplace more casual in order to attract the best employees is within your interest, it may be something you need to consider. Dialogue Finally, your company may benefit from not assuming a one way hierarchy with the young employee.

Not long ago, employees took orders without second guessing. Now, young employees know how educated they are, and expect to be able to explain why they think something is or is not a good idea. It may be in your best interests to embrace this feature, because not only will it help you keep their satisfaction levels high – the young employee may have some good ideas.

Maintaining satisfaction in the younger generation is difficult, and sometimes it’s not worth your time – if the employee is merely an average or slightly above average employee, you may find it’s not worth it to try that hard to improve their satisfaction. But if you have a good young employee that you want to keep – or you’re looking to hire the best young employees into your company – the above list represents some of the potential ways you can attract and maintain satisfaction levels in younger employees.