When thinking about my future job, my assumption was always that I would pick my top five companies that I wanted to work for. And I would work my hardest to procure a job from one of them and then work my way up the ranks; during that time, gain some experience and then make a career change, if I so choose to. “According to the Labor Department, “the average person born in the later years of the baby boom (roughly 1945-1960) held 10.5 jobs from age 18 to 40.” In 2006, the most recent year for which there are statistics, 54 million Americans, or 40 percent of the work force, left their jobs.”

In an economic time such as this, where any job is more preferable than no job, it is hard to find solid employees who will want to stay with your company far after more jobs become available. Here are some alarming statistics (Jason Martin and Conrad Schmidt’s research) that can mean high turnover and the loss of capable, future-thinking workforce:

• One in four intends to leave her current employer within the next year. 12 percent of all the high potentials in the study said they were actively searching for a new job.
  
• One in three admits he is not putting all his effort into his job.
  
• One in five believes her personal aspirations are very different from what the company has planned for her.
  
• Four in 10 have little confidence in their co-workers and even less confidence in the senior team.

Here are six ways that the American Express OPEN Forum suggests to keep your rising stars on track:

1. Keep them engaged

Nobody likes sitting around waiting for something to do because let’s face it, as Gen Y we are able to navigate through tasks with ease through our ability to quickly source and synthesize information and apply it immediately to newly learned skills. Your rising stars want stimulating work, recognition for their accomplishments, and the chance to push their career forward and prosper with the company.

2.  Assess them for future potential

The three attributes that really matter in the success of rising stars are ability, engagement and aspiration. Rising stars need to feel personally connected and committed to your company and its mission. And they certainly need to want to advance in the company. Gen Y is less money and promotion motivated than their predecessors, highlight the other benefits and perks of a future with your company in addition to a better title, a bigger office and a larger paycheck.

3.Manage them at the corporate level

Senior leaders and general managers must share in the task of developing high potentials. Your star players will be much more willing to contribute to the company if they’re treated like the critical organizational assets that they are.

4. Don’t be afraid to place them in “live fire” roles

Don’t be afraid to place your emerging stars in demanding roles where they have to acquire new capabilities in order to succeed, oftentimes you’ll be surprised how well they react and adapt. Don’t leaving them where you know they’ll succeed.

5. Make them feel special

Martin and Schmidt’s research found that under normal circumstances, high potentials put in 20 percent more effort than other employees in the same roles. Gestures of appreciation, whether generous or modest, show your employees that hard work will be rewarded accordingly.

6. Share future strategies with them

One of the strongest factors in high top employees’ engagement is their confidence in their managers and in the company’s strategic capabilities. Let them know they’re part of the team that is building the company’s future. That’s exactly what you want your rising stars to do, after all.

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Promotions and Money. These two things have been the sole motivating and driving force behind the American workforce.  Well, not so much anymore. As the workforce broadens its spectrum, and the younger generation increasingly begins to fill their roles in the professional world, their expectations are changing, as well as their motivations.

Millennial’s still share some common major motivations for performance, but the order of importance is just arranged differently. But how can managers motivate and incentivize their employees on a smaller scale?  Well it’s not too hard to motivate them, you just have to figure out what makes them tick, and most likely it’s not the same thing that motivates you.

Let’s look at two different scenarios.

The first:  A law firm is working on a large case with the deadline only three weeks away. The intense workload requires all associates on the case to put in 80+ hours a week to complete the work on time.

The second: A certain shipping and distribution warehouse is ranked the lowest in overall productivity in the region due to high turnover.  The plant manager wants a push to meet productivity benchmarks through the quarter’s end, when they can hire more workers.  He needs to incentivize the current workers to hit certain daily and weekly numbers to ensure the warehouse meets the benchmarks and rises from the bottom ranking.

How can these two very different workplaces and situations use similar tactics to motivate their Gen Y workers?

1)      Start by considering what really motivates them.  Remember, Millennials are not as enamored with promises of future promotions and rewards as you might be.  Get to know your team and find out their personality traits, likes and dislikes.  Whether you are able to learn about them individually, like in the law firm; or as a group, like in the warehouse; managers that know what makes their employees tick are the most successful motivators, and tend to be respected managers.

2)      Translate what interests them into something that might incentivize them.  For example, perhaps your team is made of up social butterflies.  They like going out in evenings after work, and spend late nights out on the town on the weekends.  Incentivize performance with a morning off the day after St. Patrick’s Day.

Perhaps the warehouse employees are interested in videogames and technology.  So the manager purchases a $300 Playstation and a few Best Buy gift cards for smaller increments and holds a contest for meeting the benchmarks.  He tracks the competition on a board near the vending machine where everyone can see it.  Suddenly friendly competition is sparked, the benchmarks are met and exceeded, and it only cost the manager a few hundred dollars.

3)      Instigate some friendly competition!  Whether it was gold stars in elementary school, vying for the top grade in class, making the varsity track team, or giving the best class presentation, Gen Y is used to competition.  Don’t be afraid to create fun contests with small rewards along the way, like lattes, lunch, or a taking off an hour early are great ways to power your employees through projects and deadline while keeping morale and performance high.

The key when incentivizing your employees is to tap into their personalities and the group dynamic. And don’t be afraid to ask them, they probably already have some ideas and suggestions for ways you could motivate and reward them.

We spend a lot of time talking with Gen Y’ers about their experiences and perceptions of the workplace and their careers. Here’s some examples of ways to not motivate your employees!

How Not to Incentive Your Employees:

Some true ways that companies have tried to incentivize employees:

“Our company cut our bonuses due to the recession.  But they tried to make it sound good by changing the dress code to casual. They told us that we didn’t have to dress professionally for work anymore, so we’d save money on dry cleaning bills and it’d be a one-off.”

“We got baby trees for Arbor Day to reward us for a good quarter.  We busted our humps and I’m pretty sure those trees cost the company hardly anything.  I didn’t even take mine.”

“Our numbers had been down due to the recession, so our manager bought a box of bacon band aids from a gag gift shop and told us whoever closed the most accounts that week would get the band aids.  I wasn’t too interested in working double time for a box of band aids.”

“It was the holidays and our manager told us we would get a reward at the next meeting.  It was a box of donuts, which we had at all the meetings, and we got to decorate miniature stockings with puff paint and hang them on the wall. I felt like I was in elementary school again.”

“They’ll have us pitch them on something that we really want and could use in our jobs, like how we might use an iPad. So we’ll work really hard and get really excited. But then they take the presentation and pitch it to others, and we never hear anything again, until a few weeks later when another department has the iPads.”

“They took away our vehicle stipends, but tried to play it off by rewarding us with theme dress-up days on Fridays. So now on Friday’s we have Hawaiian shirt day, or sports day.”

“Once we went out for a happy hour for good sales, which was fun.  But the manager was being kind of stingy.  It turns out he was trying to keep the happy hour bill low because he wanted to take some of the other staff members to the strip club and they wanted to buy drinks there.”

“We never had any rewards, but the owner of the business tried to incentivize us anyway with promising stuff to us we knew would never happen, like a trip to Hawaii, or remodeling our office.”

“We had a contest at work, with a cash prize, which was cool.  But when I won it, I had to take the money from my own budget.  So essentially I won the ability to take money from myself.”

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While every upcoming generation is regarded as flawed by their elders, it seems Gen Y is seen especially negatively. A recent article at In These Times focuses on whether Millennials are cursed. According to sources cited, “everyone born since the mid-1970’s” is “coddled, overexposed and overindulged”. Having grown up with reality TV, they want to be instantly famous. Paradoxically, they also “reflect a new sense of existential aloneness and a desperate need to be recognized”. They are, in other words, narcissistic and disconnected. Or perhaps, they are torn between narcissism and empathy. The jury is out.

A blogger (Valley Girl with a Brain) who defines the Millennials as those born between 1980 and 1995 lets her peers know that she watched 60 Minutes and learned that “Mr. Rogers lied” and they really “aren’t that special” and “there is no perfect job”. And she worries about whether her decision to go back to graduate school was a really special bad decision.

So are Millennials truly that much more narcissistic and disconnected than the rest of us were at that age?

For their answers, check out the original blog post here.

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Today’s workers will hold more careers in their lifetime than ever, and it’s not just the Gen Y’ers that are accepting continual reinvention; in fact, the average worker is estimated to hold 20+ jobs in their lifetime!  That’s a lot of people doing a lot of moving!  The unfortunate news for companies is even if they implement every possible means to retain their employees at a higher rate, the fact of the matter remains that the modern employee is likely to move around a lot more.

Reckoning a future where the median time frame for average job tenure will most likely drop, and the average rates of both voluntary and involuntary turnover are likely to rise, companies can start exploring new avenues for attracting talent to help maximize the productivity of their employees.

This leads us to look closely at the stigma of re-recruiting former employees. In the past recruiting former employees held many stigmas. Some felt that they were rewarding disloyal behavior by rehiring. Others felt it was a legal risk. According to a survey of companies by Monster.com, 71% of companies said they are willing to hire former employees, but with caution. 21% of responding companies said they are always willing due to the reduced costs, and another 21% said they would never rehire, because it rewards disloyalty. However, there is significant evidential support to show the pros of rehiring, (especially higher-level workers) may outweigh the cons.

William Bliss wrote in The Business Costs and Impact of Turnover, that even people whose intention is to establish a stable relationship with a new employer are not as likely to tolerate any unfavorable conditions (even perceived) in the workplace.  Consequently they will move on sooner than most, despite their initial predisposition toward longer terms of employment.

SelectMinds, a consulting company based out of New York determined that Fortune 500 companies could save more than $12 million per year simply by increasing the percentage of rehires to 10%-12% of their total hires.

Why is it that rehiring can be so beneficial to the bottom line and the well-being of a company?  To start, Rehiring costs half as much as a new hire.  New hires are 40% less productive than rehires in their first quarter, and rehires get up to speed and re-assimilated into the culture much quicker than a new hire. In terms of retention & tenure; when returning to a former employer, the average tenure of a rehire on their second stint with the company is twice as long as a new hires would be.  Additionally, rehires also send a positive message to current employees when they rejoin the staff; reinforcing that the company is a great place to work, and even those who have left wish to return.

Rehiring higher-level knowledge workers has added benefits as well.  In many industries, almost everyone is connected to everyone else through some way, shape or form.  Maintaining positive relations with former employees, (even if they are never rehired), can help strengthen the company’s image and employment brand.  And in today’s lay-off culture, the companies that maintain amicable relations will be recognized and valued.  Cem Sertoglu, Co-founder of SelectMinds says, “Companies are searching for ways to lay workers off in a smart, humane way – and to avoid simply walking away from, and alienating, the human capital that the company has nurtured, invested in and bonded with.”

Take into consideration the fact that 20% of the information on the internet about your company was not written by your company.  These are customers, vendors, current & former employees sharing their opinions and experiences.  In today’s age of constant communication and social media, maintaining former employee relations can help ensure that the information shared is positive. Even relationships that ended less than amicably can be made less damaging through proper former employee relations.

Rehires, particularly Gen Y’ers have often been able to gain valuable experience and knowledge during their time away from your company, amassing education and valuable experience.  Many times they are able to apply valuable insights from the practices of other industries and even competitors. (Just be sure they are aware if any information is proprietary & cannot be shared with you!)  Additionally, these employees now know exactly what they signing up for when being rehired, so the likelihood of misunderstandings or rough on-boarding periods are minimized.

What are some ways you can start engaging your former employees?

1)      It begins with the exit interview. To start, ensure that the process is done administered in such as way that the information gathered is valuable.  Departing employees often have a desire to help remedy the situations they found unfavorable that are causing them to leave, or are willing to explain in detail why their new position is much more attractive to them.  If using a long-hand form, switch to something more quantifiable.  Utilize rating scales, check boxes & short answer formats, so trends & data can be better identified & measured.

2)      Don’t be afraid to ask probing questions, such as what factors exactly caused them to leave the company, or if they would recommend the company to a friend, or what they would say if they were asked about employment with the company. Ensure them that their exit interview will remain confidential with HR, and it is safe for them to name names or cite specific situations if they feel the need.

3)      Consider creating an online “alumni” network, such as on Linked In or Facebook. Create a positive space where former employees can engage with one another, share news & expertise and interact with the company.  This will help create a positive lasting impression of your company with former employees, even if they are never rehired. It also keeps the door open for your company to tap into their expertise of those with specialized skills or knowledge.

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