has released its annual Global Leadership Forecast, and the report finds that organizations with higher percentages of women and Millennials in leadership roles perform better. There’s no doubt Millennials are the future of our organizations, so it’s time to start understanding who they are, what they want from their employers and how to best manage them. This week’s collection of articles about Millennials and the workplace can help.
- Why The Most Successful Organizations Have Women And Millennials In Charge. Fast Company: “Millennials present a unique catch-22: Their presence in leadership positions related to the company’s growth rate. Companies with a 30 percent proportion of young people in higher roles saw ‘aggressive growth,’ according to the study. When it’s more like 20 percent, they saw ‘little to low growth’ rates. At the same time, they were the least engaged of all the age groups studied, and the most likely to leave within a year.”
- Jay Samit: 3 Overlooked Benefits of Hiring Interns. Wall Street Journal: “The most overlooked benefit of hiring interns is their contacts. There was a time when only senior managers who had worked for decades in an industry had contacts worth leveraging. The unique thing about Millennials is that they didn’t grow up in a vacuum. Thanks to social media, Millennials are the most interconnected generation the world has ever seen. Any startup that is trying to reach this generation can harness their interns’ social networks to reach millions of other young consumers across Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, etc.”
- Survey: Employee Resource Groups Help Engage Gen Y Workers. New Talent Times: Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) are social groups for workers with similar interests or backgrounds. These groups are usually sponsored by a senior executive, who works to ensure that the goals and objectives of the group are heard at the top levels of the company. A study by Software Advice revealed that for adults between the ages of 18 and 34, almost half (48 percent) noted they would either be “very interested” or “somewhat interested” in the prospect of joining an ERG — a percentage that dipped drastically for respondents over the age of 35 (25 percent).”
- How To Manage Talented People By Not Bossing Them Around. TheNextWeb: “At its heart, the move away from bosses is a reaction against command and control management. Bossy practices and overbearing pecking orders disconnect people from meaning and intrinsic motivation at work. It’s no surprise that Dan Pink, bestselling author of books on the changing world of work, observes an unfolding scenario in which ‘talented people need organizations less than organizations need talented people.’ Talented people don’t go into startups to follow step-by-step directions and wait for approval at every turn. They want to move fast, break things, discover and create — not be treated like children.”
Employers, if you’re trying to better understand the Millennials who work for you and are applying to your organization, read my new white paper:
