Whether you aim to introduce millennials to your startup’s employee lineup in the near future or are already engaged with coworkers and team members who belong to this generation, their addition to your offices can have transformative effects on the company. According to Inc.com, 74% of millennials prefer working in small, tight-knit teams, while 38% of them feel that outdated HR and employee processes actively hurt their professional careers and performance. Millennials are pro-active, solution-driven and career development-oriented individuals which will more than likely have positive effects on your startup as a whole.
However, they are also prone to changing work environments frequently and are attracted to new positions, job descriptions and companies every few years. This is why retaining them in your company for extended periods of time is a challenge in and out of itself. That being said, let’s dive into several effective strategies for your startup which can help you not only retain millennial employees but also create a more productive and positive work environment as a result.
Advantages of Millennial Retention
Let’s discuss why millennials are a generation worth considering for your retention efforts before we take a look at the strategies themselves. According to Patricia Wool, HR Specialist at Grab My Essay: “Keeping your workforce diverse in terms of generational gaps, specializations, career goals and character profiles is a great way to ensure a dynamic, proactive and positive environment in your small business or startup.”
Given their professional emphasis on ongoing development, shifting job descriptions and constant personal challenges, retaining millennials is all about providing just that for your mutual benefit.
In doing so, they will effectively add a plethora of benefits for your startup’s day-to-day workflow and productivity, including the following points:
● Higher work dedication and brand loyalty
● Reduced onboarding and training time due to retention
● Improved overall morale due to long-term coworking
● Ability to delegate numerous tasks to experienced employees
● Improved client servicing due to familiar long-term employees
● Ability to groom employees for executive roles over time
Effective Strategies for Millennial Retention Open a Communication Channel
One of the first things you can do in terms of millennial retention in your startup is to simply open a communication channel with your coworkers. Organize office meetings, set up dedicated social media, email or remote coworking channels for feedback and suggestions as soon as possible. This will allow millennials and other employees in your startup to have a way of expressing their thoughts, suggest feedback or simply chat with one another on their off time. This type of engagement is highly efficient at increasing your startup’s retention across the board due to a higher feeling of belonging from your staff.
Company Culture Matters
No matter the scale or industry in which your startup operates, business culture will often make or break your retention rates across the board. How often do you organize professional seminars for your coworkers? What kind of communication, teamwork and atmosphere is persistent in your day-to-day operations? Are your coworkers familiar with the long-term goals and vision of your startup, thus relating it to their work? All of these elements add up to your company culture and are a determining factor in your retention. If millennial and other employees don’t identify with the current state of your culture, they will likely seek new professional opportunities elsewhere.
Audit their Professional Roadmaps
Every employee on your roster is there for personal reasons and this cannot be stated enough when it comes to millennials. You can instruct your HR specialist or department to audit your employees on their professional aspirations, roadmaps and development plans.
Some might be interested in delving into other job descriptions while others might want to try their hands at project management. Try to meet your employees halfway when it comes to their goals since this will be a decisive factor in their retention decision down the line.
Introduce R&R
A Reward and Recognition (R&R) program is a useful tool to implement in your startup for a number of reasons. It will effectively create a healthy competitive environment in the company while also allowing you to showcase individual employees on a bi-weekly or monthly basis. R&R should be implemented by your HR or management and tracked on a daily basis based on productivity and activities which everyone can participate in. By creating a dynamic, exciting and goal-oriented environment through R&R, millennials will be that much more inclined to retain their contracts with your startup.
Offer Coaching Opportunities
Depending on your coworkers’ experience and time spent in the startup, they might feel insecure or unconfident in their abilities. Coaching is a great channel both for your millennial employees and HR to find out what works and doesn’t work in the company. Create a coaching environment for your employees by instructing your senior coworkers and HR to simply talk to their coworkers from time to time about their work. Make sure that everyone is aware that this process is in place so that everyone can improve their professional skills and performance and not as a means to discover detractors or people who are unsatisfied with the company as a whole. Coaching will ensure that people collaborate more efficiently and grow team building and strategic planning rather than as a group of individuals.
Evolve the Company over Time
Lastly, it’s easy to get into an in-house routine and let things stay the same for extended periods of time. Just like the office needs dusting from time to time, so does your company culture, coworker dynamics and other work-based activities. Make sure to ask your employees for frequent feedback. Even simple things such as refurbished equipment, computer upgrades or interior décor changes can have drastic effects on your startup’s performance and employee motivation. Most importantly, the dynamic nature of this approach will allow millennials to stay onboard for longer periods of time, and feel valued.
It’s easy to look at the ways to retain millennials as unnecessary changes to your already-functioning office workflow. However, these small-yet-significant shifts in day-to-day routine will provide everyone in your startup with a fresh and pro-active environment to work in.
Try to implement these and other creative strategies to ensure millennial retention going forward and you will undoubtedly find the perfect balance of useful and enjoyable activities. With that said, let us know about your experiences with employee retention and the millennial generation in the comments section below!
Written by guest blogger: Melanie Sovann
Bio: Melanie Sovann is a graduated Editor and Senior Writer at Trust My Paper. Her career’s focus lies in professional blogging and editorials where she aims to broaden her writing and editing skills through informative content. In her spare time, Melanie enjoys to swim and walk with her pet dogs.