3 Programs & 3 Strategies to Retain Millennials

Millennial expert Gabrielle Bosché spoke to attendees at the 2018 #GovTechLive forum to share advice for those wanting to retain millennial staff. If you're an innovative educator you care about this because these are your colleagues (or yourself) aged 22 - 37 in 2018.

Three programs that will increase retention:  

1) Onboarding: How are you making your new millennial hires feel a part of something they want to stick with? If you miss this, you will be much less likely to retain this staff member.

2) Mentoring: What type of mentoring/peer mentoring / collaborative mentoring opportunities are you providing for your milliennial employees? 

3) Training: By training, this is more than just hard skills. Millennials want soft skill training in areas like conflict resolution, managing up, managing expectations, and health and wellness.  

Three strategies to retain millennials

 

1)  Expectations: Millennials want to know your expectations at the start and they want to know how they are doing.  

You can help a millennial know how they're doing using the stoplight strategy.

• Red: Stop doing that.

• Yellow: Improve that. Here's how.

• Green:  Keep doing that.

 

2) Context: Don't just tell a millennial what work needs to be done. Provide the context so they can make sense of where this fits into the bigger picture. 

 

3) Purpose: Millennials don't want to just be hired for their skill. They want to be hired for their passion and their story. Ideally, millennials want to have a story that connects to the purpose of the work they do at an organization. Know your millennial's story and how their story connects to your organization's purpose.

Your Turn

What do you think? Would these strategies and programs resonate with the millennials where you work? Does your employer implement strategies and programs like this? What might be different for other generations?