We’re seeing declining numbers in our civic organization. We do great work in the community and can provide a lot of opportunities for young people. But we can’t seem to tempt younger members into joining, and we’re not alone. Is the future of organizations like ours doomed? Do we have to be completely virtual and sit around at meetings text message one another on Facebook or what? What can we do to attract young members?

Many organizations are facing a unique dilemma and are asking themselves the question, “what does the future of our organization’s memberships look like?” They have a point, young professionals aren’t exactly scrambling to join organizations such as the Elks, Shriners, Rotary, Lions and Kiwanas.  Trade and professional based recruitment numbers are also down.  However, online social networks are booming and leaving the brick and mortar organizations such as chambers of commerce, community centers and church organizations empty.

“Aren’t kids today just disengaged in general?”

Not at all. Considered from a generational perspective, this trend goes against Generation X and Y’s inherent tribal characteristic.  This generation loves collaboration.  They thrive on community, friendship and real connections.  They are inherently more civically-minded than their predecessors, they seek to make a difference in the world and love seeing firsthand the effects of their contributions.  They are the most diverse generation yet and very globally minded.  Considering the above profile, shouldn’t these demographics be lining up around the block to join organizations?

In the well-known book, Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital Robert Putnam acknowledges that participation in organizations has declined since the 1950’s, he attributes this to a lack of trust that he attributes to “the long litany of political tragedies and scandals since the 1960s.” Putnam is not alone in his belief that technological “individualizing” of our time has caused us to wear “virtual reality helmets,” he refers to the growing evolution of technology as the imminent reality of the eventual demise of American social capital.

What Putnam didn’t forsee…

Web 3.0, cloud computing, smartphones… Electronic devices are becoming smaller and are integrating more easily into our lives than ever before.

We used to subscribe to various newspapers and magazines that we paid a premium for and read on their publication schedules, we spoke on the telephone while at home or in the office, we took 35mm film for developing (it was expensive and took days) and we shared our lives through pictures with large heavy photo albums.  Remember missing an episode of your favorite TV show and it was gone forever? Remember receiving letters in the mailbox that we actually had to read?  Technology has changed the way that we operate in unrecognizable ways, and it’s not slowing down any time soon.  Today devices such as the iPad allow us to access all our publications and favorite books at the touch of a screen. We can access the internet from anywhere, we can share huge volumes of photos with anybody, and view them on a whim. We can continue casual rapport relationships with people around the world.  All on a device that is smaller and more lightweight than many books. As a result, we’re taking our virtual realities out into the world with us. Our virtual realities now live life with us, not the other way around.

The new generation is connected while they sip lattes in a café, engage in weekend wine tasting trips, skateboard in the park, snowboard on the mountain, or take their children to the zoo.  The new generation is not disengaging from organizations because they prefer to connect in virtual realities exclusively, they are disengaged because organizations aren’t readily available to integrate seamlessly into their lives.  In most cases, engaging with an organization can’t happen on the fly. They have to be somewhere at a certain time and in a certain matter to engage.  Although the new generation identifies with the foundations and visions of these organizations, they don’t see how they live fitting into what organizations require of them.  And besides personal satisfaction for service, they don’t see a personal benefit to joining.  Work-life balance and the quality of life is more important to the largest majority of Gen X and Y.

“Ok, so we don’t connect with the new generation the way they want to connect, is that really the only reason?”

Of course not, that would make this problem a simple one to solve!  The new generation knows these organizations do good works, but the activities of the clubs don’t appear to co-exist alongside the lives the new generation leads.  The new generation doesn’t see the good work these organizations do in their community and the world because they don’t tell anybody about it!  Another major obstacle that separates the new generation is money, and I don’t mean dues.  The new generation is not interested in joining an organization where it seems like all they do is write checks.  Not all organizations are this way, but many think they are.

“Short of going out and knocking on doors or something, how do we change this perception?”

Robert Putnam was right that the new generation is disenchanted.  They’re seasoned to look at things that compete for their time and resources through a lens of suspicion.  They crave a real authentic message and a captivating story.  They also need to hear about the amazing work these organizations do and how they can get involved.  And they need to hear about it in a space they actually hang out in and understand.  Telling your story at a expensive gala benefit dinner is probably not going to serve this purpose.  If they hear about an inspiring new service project through a peer, or through an inspiring or funny video on Facebook or Twitter, they’re likely to pay some attention.  The more authentic messages they hear, the more attention they’re paying.  This happens within these organizations every single day, but they stay within the organization’s walls.  If they want to cultivate the next generation of membership, they need to start telling these stories to the rest of the world, in a big way.

This video about Kiwanas has only been received 3500 views (that’s like 10 views in YouTube time).   It has a tone and a message that would appeal to a young generation. Why did I have to go looking for it?

Here’s a neat little video from Rotary about social media. It doesn’t actually say they’re doing anything about using it though. But they have a point.

RI Social Media Presentation from Rotary International on Vimeo.

To learn more about engaging the new generation of organizational membership or employees, contact us or call 503-512-5402 to book a speaking engagement or introductory assessment meeting.  Click Here to subscribe to our monthly newsletter, Cube Think.  Gen Cubed specializes in creating innovative solutions for the multidimensional workforce.

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How are you going to differentiate yourself in your world?

At first branding was something that we did to a product, then to a company and now branding has evolved into something that we do for ourselves.  I feel that this can be hard to conceptualize for people, including myself.  Personal branding is not a thing, or a product.  It is not tangible and it is something that doesn’t just happen overnight.  However discovering and developing your personal brand just might help you in the long run.

Having a personal brand is helpful because it differentiates you from all of the other “you’s.”  And that is exactly what potential employers and clients seek, uniqueness.

In Heather Huhman’s article about discovering your personal brand, she describes that Personal Branding/Brand Identity include three main elements: Mission, Vision and Mantra.  These elements can help you to see and accomplish both long-term and short-term goals, and can be added to one and other to constantly develop.  Questions to ask yourself when starting to think about the aforementioned elements:

• What is your mission?
• What is your vision for the future?
• What are your key attributes, personality traits and strengths?
• What motivates you?
• What are your goals?
• What is your definition of success?
• What impact do you want to have on people?

David Trahan, describes the elements and what each should say about you.

Mission: Asking yourself “why do I exist [as a professional]?” As a professional, what goals are you trying to accomplish?

Vision: What do you want to be?  Where do you want to go in life?  This should be somewhat specific, measurable and achievable.

Mantra: What is your core brand promise?  This should be succinct, memorable, and descriptive of you as a professional.

People process information in different ways, and the concept of personal branding can be hard enough to wrap your head around, so this article breaks down personal branding in a way parallel to that of product branding:

Positioning Statement: Who are you?  What is your personality?  What is your elevator speech?

Product Offering: What experience do you have?  What is your expertise?  What do you bring to the table?

Brand History: How did you get to where you are?  How are your experiences related?  How has your history created the person/brand that you are today?

Brand Tonality: What is your tone?  How do you come off to others?  What vocabulary do you use?  How do you want people to relate to you?

Communications Strategy: How are you getting your name out there?  Where can others find information about you?  How are you sharing information with others?

When thinking about your personal brand, it shouldn’t be something that just happens overnight, but something that should take time.  Obviously a lack of time seems to be the biggest obstacle in doing anything (reading a book, writing a blog, or maybe, you know, developing your personal brand).  I know that there are a lot of other things that are “more important” right now, but taking the time to sit down and think about yourself could help benefit you in the long run.

Related articles:

1. HOW TO: Develop and Maintain Your Personal Brand on Twitter
2. Creating an Online Presence to Develop Your Brand
3. Are you making these 5 Personal Branding Mistakes?

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Last month, typical American high school student Erica Goldson graduated as valedictorian of Coxsackie-Athens High School.  Instead of using her graduation speech to celebrate her triumph, share some anecdotes about success, or quote Dr. Seuss’ “Oh the Places You’ll Go!”   she channeled her inner Ivan Illich and de-constructed the logic of a valedictorian and the whole educational system in general.  We find her words shockingly resonant of what Generation Y stands for in general.

Erica originally posted her speech on Sign of the Times,

Here’s her speech with absolutely no edits or cutting. What do YOU think?

Here I stand

There is a story of a young, but earnest Zen student who approached his teacher, and asked the Master, “If I work very hard and diligently, how long will it take for me to find Zen? The Master thought about this, then replied, “Ten years . .” The student then said, “But what if I work very, very hard and really apply myself to learn fast — How long then?” Replied the Master, “Well, twenty years.” “But, if I really, really work at it, how long then?” asked the student. “Thirty years,” replied the Master. “But, I do not understand,” said the disappointed student. “At each time that I say I will work harder, you say it will take me longer. Why do you say that?” Replied the Master, “When you have one eye on the goal, you only have one eye on the path.”

This is the dilemma I’ve faced within the American education system. We are so focused on a goal, whether it be passing a test, or graduating as first in the class. However, in this way, we do not really learn. We do whatever it takes to achieve our original objective.

Some of you may be thinking, “Well, if you pass a test, or become valedictorian, didn’t you learn something? Well, yes, you learned something, but not all that you could have. Perhaps, you only learned how to memorize names, places, and dates to later on forget in order to clear your mind for the next test.

School is not all that it can be. Right now, it is a place for most people to determine that their goal is to get out as soon as possible.

I am now accomplishing that goal. I am graduating. I should look at this as a positive experience, especially being at the top of my class. However, in retrospect, I cannot say that I am any more intelligent than my peers. I can attest that I am only the best at doing what I am told and working the system. Yet, here I stand, and I am supposed to be proud that I have completed this period of indoctrination. I will leave in the fall to go on to the next phase expected of me, in order to receive a paper document that certifies that I am capable of work. But I contest that I am a human being, a thinker, an adventurer – not a worker. A worker is someone who is trapped within repetition – a slave of the system set up before him.

But now, I have successfully shown that I was the best slave.

I did what I was told to the extreme. While others sat in class and doodled to later become great artists, I sat in class to take notes and become a great test-taker. While others would come to class without their homework done because they were reading about an interest of theirs, I never missed an assignment. While others were creating music and writing lyrics, I decided to do extra credit, even though I never needed it. So, I wonder, why did I even want this position? Sure, I earned it, but what will come of it? When I leave educational institutionalism, will I be successful or forever lost? I have no clue about what I want to do with my life; I have no interests because I saw every subject of study as work, and

I excelled at every subject just for the purpose of excelling, not learning. And quite frankly, now I’m scared.

John Taylor Gatto, a retired school teacher and activist critical of compulsory schooling, asserts, “We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness – curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight simply by being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids into truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then. But we don’t do that.” Between these cinderblock walls, we are all expected to be the same. We are trained to ace every standardized test, and those who deviate and see light through a different lens are worthless to the scheme of public education, and therefore viewed with contempt.

H. L. Mencken wrote in The American Mercury for April 1924 that the aim of public education is not “to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. … Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim … is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States.”

To illustrate this idea, doesn’t it perturb you to learn about the idea of “critical thinking.” Is there really such a thing as “uncritically thinking?” To think is to process information in order to form an opinion. But if we are not critical when processing this information, are we really thinking? Or are we mindlessly accepting other opinions as truth?

This was happening to me, and if it wasn’t for the rare occurrence of an avant-garde tenth grade English teacher, Donna Bryan, who allowed me to open my mind and ask questions before accepting textbook doctrine, I would have been doomed. I am now enlightened, but my mind still feels disabled. I must retrain myself and constantly remember how insane this ostensibly sane place really is.

And now here I am in a world guided by fear, a world suppressing the uniqueness that lies inside each of us, a world where we can either acquiesce to the inhuman nonsense of corporatism and materialism or insist on change. We are not enlivened by an educational system that clandestinely sets us up for jobs that could be automated, for work that need not be done, for enslavement without fervency for meaningful achievement. We have no choices in life when money is our motivational force. Our motivational force ought to be passion, but this is lost from the moment we step into a system that trains us, rather than inspires us.

We are more than robotic bookshelves, conditioned to blurt out facts we were taught in school. We are all very special, every human on this planet is so special, so aren’t we all deserving of something better, of using our minds for innovation, rather than memorization, for creativity, rather than futile activity, for rumination rather than stagnation? We are not here to get a degree, to then get a job, so we can consume industry-approved placation after placation. There is more, and more still.

The saddest part is that the majority of students don’t have the opportunity to reflect as I did. The majority of students are put through the same brainwashing techniques in order to create a complacent labor force working in the interests of large corporations and secretive government, and worst of all, they are completely unaware of it. I will never be able to turn back these 18 years. I can’t run away to another country with an education system meant to enlighten rather than condition. This part of my life is over, and I want to make sure that no other child will have his or her potential suppressed by powers meant to exploit and control. We are human beings. We are thinkers, dreamers, explorers, artists, writers, engineers. We are anything we want to be – but only if we have an educational system that supports us rather than holds us down. A tree can grow, but only if its roots are given a healthy foundation.

For those of you out there that must continue to sit in desks and yield to the authoritarian ideologies of instructors, do not be disheartened. You still have the opportunity to stand up, ask questions, be critical, and create your own perspective. Demand a setting that will provide you with intellectual capabilities that allow you to expand your mind instead of directing it. Demand that you be interested in class. Demand that the excuse, “You have to learn this for the test” is not good enough for you. Education is an excellent tool, if used properly, but focus more on learning rather than getting good grades.

For those of you that work within the system that I am condemning, I do not mean to insult; I intend to motivate. You have the power to change the incompetencies of this system. I know that you did not become a teacher or administrator to see your students bored. You cannot accept the authority of the governing bodies that tell you what to teach, how to teach it, and that you will be punished if you do not comply. Our potential is at stake.

For those of you that are now leaving this establishment, I say, do not forget what went on in these classrooms. Do not abandon those that come after you. We are the new future and we are not going to let tradition stand. We will break down the walls of corruption to let a garden of knowledge grow throughout America. Once educated properly, we will have the power to do anything, and best of all, we will only use that power for good, for we will be cultivated and wise. We will not accept anything at face value. We will ask questions, and we will demand truth.

So, here I stand. I am not standing here as valedictorian by myself. I was molded by my environment, by all of my peers who are sitting here watching me. I couldn’t have accomplished this without all of you. It was all of you who truly made me the person I am today. It was all of you who were my competition, yet my backbone. In that way, we are all valedictorians.

I am now supposed to say farewell to this institution, those who maintain it, and those who stand with me and behind me, but I hope this farewell is more of a “see you later” when we are all working together to rear a pedagogic movement. But first, let’s go get those pieces of paper that tell us that we’re smart enough to do so!

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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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Sitting at a desk doing paperwork and observing, this was not what MY first day was like!

I have to admit, starting a new job with a Fortune 500 company was a bit intimidating.  I thought I knew what to expect, but had no idea of everything that would be expected of me. I headed to work on my first day expecting to meet a variety of different people, I thought I would answer the phones and then hand the call over to my boss. I figured I would spend most of the day sitting at a desk and observing. I was wrongly mistaken, my first day was as if I was already a seasoned full time employee! I was just thrown into the mix.  As soon as I realized there would be no quietly observing at a desk, no handing calls off to my boss, no excuses whatsoever, I was extremely nervous. What if a customer asked me a question and I didn’t know the answer? What if I didn’t know how to do even a simple task and I did it wrong?

“My manager made me feel as though I was part of the team right away.”

My manager was so helpful to me during my first week, it really made the difference.  I realized that having a good manager can makes or break a job.  I notice that in the company I work at, there are the managers who want you to succeed (mine) and then those who don’t really care and seem to have their own agendas. My manager made me feel as though I was part of the team right away.  Even though it was clear to me that he was extremely busy, he took the time to make sure I was comfortable, my job was clear, and I felt included.  Throughout the day, he made sure to engage me any task that he was a part of so that I could learn how to do it.  By doing this, I felt as though I was constantly learning something new throughout each day. There was so much information and so many questions that I had, that I thought my brain was going to explode.

“The people I worked with made me excited to come to work, and made me feel as though I mattered.”

On my first day I arrived at work at 8:00a.m. the next time I looked at the clock it was already 2:00p.m!  I thought, “If the days go by this quickly, I’m going to love this job!” And so far I do, and it really doesn’t have anything to do with the actual job duties itself. Was I confident in my abilities in my first few days? No way.  Did I feel like I could retain all the information I was learning? Of course not. Was I excited about the internship and willing to learn and give 110% every single day? Absolutely, the people I worked with made me excited to come to work, and made me feel as though I mattered. Anytime I did something well, they would all exclaim, “Way to go! You’re a pro!” and if I was struggling with something, my manager would take the time to clearly explain what I did incorrectly and how to perform it accurately.

After a few days on the job, I was sent out for training, I was so relieved that I would be able to finally learn to master some of the duties I didn’t understand. But during training my mind was even more scrambled, I was learning about a months’ worth of information in four days.  Once training ended and it was time to apply what I had learned, I noticed applying what I had learned was much harder than I thought.  It did not come easy. I still had a lot of questions and confusion about what I was doing. I was surprised to discover that it’s easier to learn the most the hard way, by actually doing it, instead of sitting in a conference room (or a classroom) and learning about it.  In the days after, I tried to take my time when applying the new concepts, instead of forcing it and not getting to hard on myself when I wasn’t mastering them right away, and it did come more naturally. What I do know so far is, with experienced, enthusiastic and supportive co-workers, who are motivated to care about the new person in the office, it’s much easier to learn.

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Celebration Today, but What Comes Tomorrow?

My name is Ashley and I am a student at Arizona State,  and am in Portland interning at Gen Cubed.  Coming back into the “real world” can be a little surreal, it seems to me that this world that college is vigorously preparing us for doesn’t look anything like myself or my classmates imagined.  So what does the “real world” really mean?  And when does it truly start?  I guess for some it starts when we turn 18, others when we are out of college.  All I know is being 20 years old and an incoming college senior, frankly I am scared of what my future holds.

“Turns out, they don’t assign you a life adviser…”

For the most part, I’ve gone through life pretty much knowing what lies ahead.  I always knew what stage of school I was supposed to go to next, how to get there was never a question.  The first 17 years of our lives, all nicely planned (most likely by our academic adviser).  But after that last year in college, there’s the unknown.  It wouldn’t be so bad if many of us weren’t pressured from an early age to know exactly what we wanted to pursue in life.  Turns out, they don’t assign you a life adviser.

We now face the pressure of what career path to take, finding people to help us when we have no professional contacts except our parent’s friends (who can’t get over the fact that we no longer wear diapers and can actually drive a car).  They don’t tell you that when you move to a new town for college, you actually have to move again when you’re finished if you want a real job!  Just kidding.  I had a hard enough time selecting a major and deciding what classes to register for, much less making a decision that I’m told will shape the course of my life.  Many of my friends struggle with the idea of getting a full time job and getting hired right out of college.  How are we supposed to know what to do with our lives at 21?

“What does an expensive degree and ambition really get you, if you don’t know what to do with it?”

I think I've seen this guy before...bagging groceries.

I knew a 21-year-old who graduated with a degree in Political Science, he faced these same questions and was so confused as to where to work and what path to take, he decided to take a job at a local grocery store until he could figure it out.  Now he is 26, still working at the same grocery store, with no idea where to go from there.  It seems that nobody articulates to grads these days that the first job isn’t so much a golden opportunity. It seems like it’s a first step in what will be a really long complicated journey.

“What does ‘prior experience?’ even mean?”

Most well-known or large businesses that college graduates want to work for always want “prior experience.” Here is my question, “What does “prior experience” even mean?”  How are new grads applying for entry level positions supposed to get the type of experience these companies are looking for?  I always hear about companies wanting to know about what new grads and their future workforce is thinking, if this is really true, we’re willing to talk if they’ll listen.  Most of my friends and classmates frequent sites like career builder, indeed, monster and job dango, to find openings and apply. But what we’d really love is somebody who really knows what these companies are looking for to visit our classes, or even connect with us on those sites or other places like Linked In or Facebook. We want to get the right kind of experience to be the best employees possible, we just need a little direction.

Ashley Vachal is a Communication major entering her senior year at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona.  She is a native of Portland, Oregon and intends to move back after graduation. She is currently interning this summer with Gen Cubed as well as a global Fortune 500 company.

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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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Whether you’re a stay-at-home mom or a CEO, at some point in your life you will have a defining moment when your resilience is tested. The strategies you employ will determine whether you will succeed as a leader.

In my job at CNBC I am lucky to speak on a regular basis with some of the world’s top business leaders. When the global financial crisis began to unfold in 2008, I started talking to my contacts to see how they’d reacted and, even more importantly, to find out what they were doing to lead their companies to prosperity in a time of economic havoc.

Their strategies formed the basis of my book, Thriving in the New Economy: Lessons from Today’s Top Business Minds. They’re also strategies that I’ve used in my own professional and personal life. In fact, I realized in hindsight I’d been using some of these strategies all along.

Lessons From Today’s Top Business Minds

Here are the ones that have most helped me tap into my inner leader.

Don’t Get Caught Up In the Moment Or Overwhelmed in Stressful Situations

One of my daily responsibilities at CNBC is to book Squawk Box (the station’s flagship morning show). This means booking eight or nine people who can talk with expertise about breaking news. Our guests are busy people with tight schedules but I can’t book them far ahead since the show is about what’s happening now.

Recently, when we were preparing to interview some top people from Washington about President Obama’s health care summit, I learned that Kathleen Sibelius, secretary of Health and Human Services, could only appear very early in the morning on the show. So then I had to reschedule other guests–but wait until they got back to me with the times they could do.

Meanwhile, I was also trying to reach Elizabeth Warren, chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for a segment about the banking system. At one point, I had her office and the White House on the phone at the same time–one on my BlackBerry, the other on my land line. I had all these things juggling in the air, but I still had to get everything done.

I didn’t panic and instead asked myself: What can I do? So while I waited to hear back from guests, I kept producing the show. My job is about being nimble with a lot of moving parts–and turning unexpected events into opportunities.

Just as Goldman Sach’s Abby Joseph Cohen practices this mantra, I’ve learned to tackle problems head on and to be optimistic about solving them.

My oldest son had RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) when he was a baby and at age 2 he wasn’t talking a lot. His preschool teacher approached me and my husband and said, “We think your son is very smart but he may have a hearing problem.” We discovered he was clinically deaf. And very quickly we found a good doctor who discovered that the numerous ear infections he had has a baby and toddler created a lot of fluid that was causing his hearing loss.

His hearing was restored after he took medication to clear up the fluid, but we also sent our son to a speech therapist for aggressive speech therapy and within a year his speech was fine. From this I learned you have to be champion and move quickly when you have a problem.

Control What you Can Control

Normally in times of crisis it feels like things are spinning out of control. Step back and list what you can control. Once you do that and recognize what you can address, you will have a calmer outlook on the overall problem.

A great example is Steve Sadove at Saks. He said while he couldn’t control the buying habits of the consumer during the height of the crisis, the one thing he could control was inventory. He and his team then took the necessary steps to tackle that problem through discounts and also cut back on ordering for the next season.

Go with your Gut

If you believe in something, you have to go for it. In moments of crisis there’s no time for second guessing. I do pre-interviews with prospective guests for CNBC on a daily basis, and if I think someone isn’t going to be good on television, I’m usually right.

Be Innovative

The best business leaders always think outside the box, and I try to do that, too. I innovate by telling stories and sometimes the best stories I find start with one sentence I’ve read that is buried in the middle of a newspaper article.

I read a lot, including newspapers from the middle of nowhere, and as I read something will grab me. Or I’ll read a phrase, like I did recently when I came across a paragraph in a story on the “global debt bomb.” That sparked me to start thinking about how can we on Squawk Box could take the Greece story and turn it into our own. I booked a guest on an angle on the debt crisis in Greece that was not being addressed at that time.

Stick with Your Game Plan

Set up a timeline of when you want to reach your goal and don’t waiver. My goal from the time I was in college was to work on network television by the time I was 30–and I did it by age 29.

I finished college in three years instead of four with a double major. And while I’ve never constantly looked for the next job, I have leaped at opportunities and tried to build on my experience. I got my first taste of network television when I was 22 and was the first photojournalist on the ground to videotape soldiers who were leaving Fort Drum in Watertown, N.Y., for Haiti. My video was aired on CBS News with Dan Rather. At that moment I felt, I can really do this.

Don’t Be Swayed by Naysayers

Earlier in my career I was at the No. 1 station in Orlando, working as the nightside assignment editor in charge of reporter assignments for the 11 o’clock newscast. Then a friend of my husband told me that he knew a wealthy person who wanted to start a business show. But the person had no business television experience.

Some of my friends said, “Are you crazy? You’re going to leave the top news show on the No. 1 Orlando station to create a show out of nothing?” But I felt it was a great new opportunity and, because of the show we created, I (later) got an offer from CNBC. Now those naysayers look at where I am in my career and say, “Wow.”

Lori Ann LaRocco is a senior talent producer at CNBC and the author of Thriving in the New Economy: Lessons from Today’s Top Business Minds from John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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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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