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LinkedIn: Today’s workplace should look more like a jazz band (yes, that’s a pic of me) rather than a Dilbert-style bureaucracy that looks more like a dysfunctional marching band. As Dilbert pointed out (in the best selling management book of all time) our approach to talent management is deeply flawed.
This was a really effective article. I can get behind a lot of what the author is saying. I think there is a vast difference in the business mind of the net generation than of generations past. We've grown up in a whole new world; it only makes sense that the way we interact in terms of business would be different, and thus the way we manage/respond to management would be different. It's important for business to start taking a look at how there strategies work in terms of attracting fresh minds to work for their companies. People aren't looking for jobs in the newspaper anymore.
The number of articles I’ve seen about managing Millennials has increased ten-fold over the last year. I can only assume that these Do’s and Don’ts articles are attributed to more and more members of our generation entering the workforce every day. Now this isn’t exactly new right, most of the people I graduated high school or undergrad with have been working for a number of years now, and a few like me are back in school getting yet another a degree. So why all of a sudden have articles like this started popping up? My theory is, employers are behind, it’s taken them a few years to really start to notice and feel the impact of this generations habits and ‘needs’. By monitoring their retention and turn-over rate in employees is one way of doing this, and I can only imagine that over the past five or ten years the number of people who have started a job and stayed there the entire time has decreased quite a bit. Now, some of this can probably be attributed to the recovery of our economy, individuals are more comfortable seeking the job they want, not the job they need. So if they aren’t happy, quitting has become increasingly easier. That’s where better management of this generation can come into play, they more satisfied your employees are, the more likely they are to stay right? Well that isn’t just about pay and benefits anymore, sure that comes into play, but for some people it isn’t the end-all-be-all. Do I have a mountain of student loan debt to pay off – yes. Would I prefer a higher paying job that allows me to live comfortable – yes. Would I take a job that pays a few thousand dollars a year less than another if I meant the growth opportunities, environment, culture, and mission were better, stronger…etc – YES. I think there’s something to be said there, and I think it all starts with management techniques.
This is one of many articles about Millennials in the workplace that I have seen/read recently. This one is the most useful one. Instead of just describing how that generation works differently and saying that businesses need to adapt, it actually give good tips on how to adapt to their needs. The most common idea through all of the articles is that the Millennial generation needs more feedback than previous generations and I agree with that idea. It's not just that we crave praise, as much as I like to hear that I did a good job, I'm almost more interested in how I can improve my work. The yearly review system just doesn't work for Millennials. Like the article says, by the time the review rolls around, the work is so far gone that feedback is too little, way too late. Moving to real-time feedback seems to be the best solution for dealing with this change in attitude. Now is the time for businesses to change their approach before the entire workforce is made up of this generation and the changes are too late.
I think this is a great article, and I may be biased as a millennial, but I think these are more universal management solutions. Basically the way the article read to me was "dont just be selfish and pretend to care." I think so many businesses care so much about the bottom line that they lose connection with the people who are helping to make it happen. When that happens, you are not able to attract the top talent, retain the people you have, and people become stagnant in their jobs. Thats what this article is really saying. Regardless of what you are doing, if people care a lot and love coming to work, you as a manager are going to get a better product.
I always laugh when I see articles that have something to do with understanding Millennials. I don't really think we are that hard to understand as a generation but then again I am a Millennial so how can I fully understand the older generation. However, this article had some good points that I wouldn't mind being utilized in the work place. We are definitely more used to immediate feedback and relationships and seeing that positively reinforced would help everyone all around. The Millenial workers can improve their work by understanding what is expected and needed and the older generation managers will have more successful workers.
It's funny to think about how different this new generation is. The way that we view everything has become quite self-centered in my opinion. For example, the article mentioned how people used to go look for work in advertisements, but now companies should work on social media to approach the millennials. It seems as though the new age workers don't want a job unless the job comes to them. For someone not to be actively looking for work becomes very worrying.
I think that this article pretty much hits it on the head. Since hourly paid jobs are becoming more and more scarce, the corporate world has to rethink how work happens and how best to promote work in a way that isn't constricted by a daily or hourly time frame. Millennials have grown up into a world that has shown how soul-sucking an impersonal corporate job is and how constricting the cubicle is. Millennials want to feel invested in their work, not like a cog in a cold and empty machine. I think this new work culture also comes from wanting employers to see their potential employees as people of many talents that can contribute to the company, not just how well they can generate paperwork. I don't think that employers have to become our best friends, but we just want to be recognized as a name and a face, and not just by what we produce.
I feel a little strange writing about this and also being a millennial, but I do agree with what this article has to say, and that we need different managing styles. My dad often hires people at his office and their ages vary greatly and sometimes they are 40+ years old and sometimes they have just graduated from college, or are still taking classes nearby at night. I remember him coming to me and asking what it was that I wanted out of an employer when I was in college because he was having a hard time with the younger employees he hired and the first thing I said is, are you including them? Are you telling them what you need out of them and what your expectations are? He hadn't thought about it that way at all. To him, he had worked with his grandfather his whole life as a young adult and he had used his knowledge of how his grandfather had treated him (he was a quiet guy and you just sort of knew that he expected what you did to be done right the first time) as an example for how he managed others. But the younger millennial generation doesn't want that. We want feedback. We didn't always work for our families and learn how to be an employee and we are spending more time in school and less time out in the workforce so we sometimes need an explanation of expectations for being an employee and we want them right away so that we don't spend too long thinking we know what we're doing only to be told we've been doing it wrong the whole time. It's hard to find a way to bridge that gap and I'm not saying it's always the best way to do it, but in my experience a lot of us need that sort thing and I, personally, think it's a great way to show your employees that you care about the work they're doing and you want them to know how to improve.
So while I agree with everything the article has said, it really is just another one of those "help rags" that takes information you already know and gives it a pretty name so it'll be easier for you to swallow. Of course the workforce is changing, it does every generation. As innovations are made its forced to adapt, why this generations workforce is having so hard of a time slipping into that rhythm I don't understand. Of course it can be partly attributed to an older generation that is stuck in its ways. But is it also possible that all this "Create Work-Learning Environments" jazz is coddling the outwardly-but-not-inwardly developed youth?
This makes a lot of sense. This is the way our generation was trained to work in school, or if not that at least the way that schools strived to educate their students. Emphasis on collaboration, feedback and learning by doing are something that we hear a lot about in education, regardless of whether all those great ideas are carried out or not depending on budgetary restrictions and other bothersome realities. It is going to become increasingly important for employers to understand how their employees have been trained to think and work their whole life, and provide a workplace and enterprise model that accounts for those characteristics of the new workforce. Our use of technology is also a huge factor in these workplace models, since the internet grants the type of instant response, widespread communication, “equalization” of interlocutors, varied learning opportunities and heavy collaboration that we apparently look for in a company.
I wonder why we are focusing this new ideas of management around millennials. Maybe it's because I am a millennial and am the targeted audience for this new idea. To me this absolutely needs to be the new trend of management. People need to stop feeling like they are working for someone, and more like they are working on with someone. We need to let people know that we are constantly working on improvements, not just annually when you learn whether or not your getting a pay raise. I feel that theatre as a whole lends itself more towards these types of management structures than corporate America, merely because collaboration is a large component of our industry and achieving our goals. Lastly fostering lasting relationships. This is how people get more work. You get jobs because you made friends and had good working relationships on the last gig, and it's what got you the next one. Though I'm not sure about the direct connection in more corporate life.
12 comments:
This was a really effective article. I can get behind a lot of what the author is saying. I think there is a vast difference in the business mind of the net generation than of generations past. We've grown up in a whole new world; it only makes sense that the way we interact in terms of business would be different, and thus the way we manage/respond to management would be different. It's important for business to start taking a look at how there strategies work in terms of attracting fresh minds to work for their companies. People aren't looking for jobs in the newspaper anymore.
The number of articles I’ve seen about managing Millennials has increased ten-fold over the last year. I can only assume that these Do’s and Don’ts articles are attributed to more and more members of our generation entering the workforce every day. Now this isn’t exactly new right, most of the people I graduated high school or undergrad with have been working for a number of years now, and a few like me are back in school getting yet another a degree. So why all of a sudden have articles like this started popping up? My theory is, employers are behind, it’s taken them a few years to really start to notice and feel the impact of this generations habits and ‘needs’. By monitoring their retention and turn-over rate in employees is one way of doing this, and I can only imagine that over the past five or ten years the number of people who have started a job and stayed there the entire time has decreased quite a bit. Now, some of this can probably be attributed to the recovery of our economy, individuals are more comfortable seeking the job they want, not the job they need. So if they aren’t happy, quitting has become increasingly easier. That’s where better management of this generation can come into play, they more satisfied your employees are, the more likely they are to stay right? Well that isn’t just about pay and benefits anymore, sure that comes into play, but for some people it isn’t the end-all-be-all. Do I have a mountain of student loan debt to pay off – yes. Would I prefer a higher paying job that allows me to live comfortable – yes. Would I take a job that pays a few thousand dollars a year less than another if I meant the growth opportunities, environment, culture, and mission were better, stronger…etc – YES. I think there’s something to be said there, and I think it all starts with management techniques.
This is one of many articles about Millennials in the workplace that I have seen/read recently. This one is the most useful one. Instead of just describing how that generation works differently and saying that businesses need to adapt, it actually give good tips on how to adapt to their needs. The most common idea through all of the articles is that the Millennial generation needs more feedback than previous generations and I agree with that idea. It's not just that we crave praise, as much as I like to hear that I did a good job, I'm almost more interested in how I can improve my work. The yearly review system just doesn't work for Millennials. Like the article says, by the time the review rolls around, the work is so far gone that feedback is too little, way too late. Moving to real-time feedback seems to be the best solution for dealing with this change in attitude. Now is the time for businesses to change their approach before the entire workforce is made up of this generation and the changes are too late.
I think this is a great article, and I may be biased as a millennial, but I think these are more universal management solutions. Basically the way the article read to me was "dont just be selfish and pretend to care." I think so many businesses care so much about the bottom line that they lose connection with the people who are helping to make it happen. When that happens, you are not able to attract the top talent, retain the people you have, and people become stagnant in their jobs. Thats what this article is really saying. Regardless of what you are doing, if people care a lot and love coming to work, you as a manager are going to get a better product.
I always laugh when I see articles that have something to do with understanding Millennials. I don't really think we are that hard to understand as a generation but then again I am a Millennial so how can I fully understand the older generation. However, this article had some good points that I wouldn't mind being utilized in the work place. We are definitely more used to immediate feedback and relationships and seeing that positively reinforced would help everyone all around. The Millenial workers can improve their work by understanding what is expected and needed and the older generation managers will have more successful workers.
It's funny to think about how different this new generation is. The way that we view everything has become quite self-centered in my opinion. For example, the article mentioned how people used to go look for work in advertisements, but now companies should work on social media to approach the millennials. It seems as though the new age workers don't want a job unless the job comes to them. For someone not to be actively looking for work becomes very worrying.
I think that this article pretty much hits it on the head. Since hourly paid jobs are becoming more and more scarce, the corporate world has to rethink how work happens and how best to promote work in a way that isn't constricted by a daily or hourly time frame. Millennials have grown up into a world that has shown how soul-sucking an impersonal corporate job is and how constricting the cubicle is. Millennials want to feel invested in their work, not like a cog in a cold and empty machine. I think this new work culture also comes from wanting employers to see their potential employees as people of many talents that can contribute to the company, not just how well they can generate paperwork. I don't think that employers have to become our best friends, but we just want to be recognized as a name and a face, and not just by what we produce.
I feel a little strange writing about this and also being a millennial, but I do agree with what this article has to say, and that we need different managing styles. My dad often hires people at his office and their ages vary greatly and sometimes they are 40+ years old and sometimes they have just graduated from college, or are still taking classes nearby at night. I remember him coming to me and asking what it was that I wanted out of an employer when I was in college because he was having a hard time with the younger employees he hired and the first thing I said is, are you including them? Are you telling them what you need out of them and what your expectations are? He hadn't thought about it that way at all. To him, he had worked with his grandfather his whole life as a young adult and he had used his knowledge of how his grandfather had treated him (he was a quiet guy and you just sort of knew that he expected what you did to be done right the first time) as an example for how he managed others. But the younger millennial generation doesn't want that. We want feedback. We didn't always work for our families and learn how to be an employee and we are spending more time in school and less time out in the workforce so we sometimes need an explanation of expectations for being an employee and we want them right away so that we don't spend too long thinking we know what we're doing only to be told we've been doing it wrong the whole time. It's hard to find a way to bridge that gap and I'm not saying it's always the best way to do it, but in my experience a lot of us need that sort thing and I, personally, think it's a great way to show your employees that you care about the work they're doing and you want them to know how to improve.
So while I agree with everything the article has said, it really is just another one of those "help rags" that takes information you already know and gives it a pretty name so it'll be easier for you to swallow. Of course the workforce is changing, it does every generation. As innovations are made its forced to adapt, why this generations workforce is having so hard of a time slipping into that rhythm I don't understand. Of course it can be partly attributed to an older generation that is stuck in its ways. But is it also possible that all this "Create Work-Learning Environments" jazz is coddling the outwardly-but-not-inwardly developed youth?
This makes a lot of sense. This is the way our generation was trained to work in school, or if not that at least the way that schools strived to educate their students. Emphasis on collaboration, feedback and learning by doing are something that we hear a lot about in education, regardless of whether all those great ideas are carried out or not depending on budgetary restrictions and other bothersome realities. It is going to become increasingly important for employers to understand how their employees have been trained to think and work their whole life, and provide a workplace and enterprise model that accounts for those characteristics of the new workforce. Our use of technology is also a huge factor in these workplace models, since the internet grants the type of instant response, widespread communication, “equalization” of interlocutors, varied learning opportunities and heavy collaboration that we apparently look for in a company.
I wonder why we are focusing this new ideas of management around millennials. Maybe it's because I am a millennial and am the targeted audience for this new idea. To me this absolutely needs to be the new trend of management. People need to stop feeling like they are working for someone, and more like they are working on with someone. We need to let people know that we are constantly working on improvements, not just annually when you learn whether or not your getting a pay raise. I feel that theatre as a whole lends itself more towards these types of management structures than corporate America, merely because collaboration is a large component of our industry and achieving our goals. Lastly fostering lasting relationships. This is how people get more work. You get jobs because you made friends and had good working relationships on the last gig, and it's what got you the next one. Though I'm not sure about the direct connection in more corporate life.
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