Intro: Hello and welcome to all our listeners! Thank you for tuning in to The Capelle Podcast, where you can get insights from Capelle on navigating the recent trends in the business world. I’m your host, Ashish Ben, and today we have with us Mark Lee, one of our very own Consultants, to share with us on the topic: Engaging Your Millennials in your Workforce. Mark, thank you for being here. (Mark Responds)

Opener Question: So, Mark, you and I are both Millennials! And that term is used to define us a lot – could we perhaps start with a working definition of what we mean by “millennials” for our time today?

Mark: Sure, Ben. There are a range of ages that people ascribe to the “Millennial” label, and the one that I hold to is from Pew Research Centre, which is anyone born between 1981 and 1996. So that means those of the age 24 to 39 in 2020. Anyone born from 1997 and onwards, we would term them as belonging to the next generation.

Ben: Thanks for that, Mark. And so to dive into our topic today, why do you think that engaging Millennials in our Workforces is so key?

Mark: Well Ben, Millennials on a very basic level, millennials are of the age now where for most organisations, they likely form an increasingly large part of workforces at the moment. So, there’s a significant demographic there that requires engagement. On a deeper level, I would say that engaging Millennial’s in your workforce is key because, generally speaking, a Millennial’s view on work is a rather unique and complex take. You see, with regards to work, Millennials occupy a space in-between the Gen Z Generation who look at influencers and social media as legitimate lifestyle choices – you know, hey I’m a TikTok/Instagram influencer, wanna sponsor me, etc, and the Gen Z put-your-nose-to-the-grindstone approach to work. What that means is that we are critical of having careers totally built on the likes of social media influence or YouTube but we are also critical of just having work be the MAIN, core thing we commit ourselves to. So, we occupy this unique ground where we think very critically before we invest into a cause, but once we have ascertained it is indeed a worthy enough cause to commit to, and only then, you’ve then got a really engaged worker who can really bring so much life and value into your workforce.

Ben: so perhaps we can dive a bit deeper into a millennial’s outlook on work, to better understand how to capture their attention and engage on their concerns?

Mark: Well first things first, I want to qualify by saying I can hardly speak for all millennials. But I’ll share from my own perspectives, observations, as well as discussions with other millennials. So, I think one of dimensions that employers will want to consider when engaging millennials is that generally speaking, us millennials tend to have a much more “global” outlook on life. What I mean by a more global outlook is that Millennials grew up in a world which was already very much networked and interconnected and only growing more and more so. People’s actions and lives had impact beyond their physical borders, you know? So, our lens of evaluation tend to look beyond our immediate cultural and local concerns, to that of being a responsible global citizen. And that of course, includes how we approach work. Essentially, we find ourselves asking questions like, “When I do this work, what kind of impact am I having beyond myself? Beyond my organisation? How is this helping society? Is this being done in another environment/country/culture, but in a better way? How can we learn from that?” and many more such viewpoints.

And so, employers may want to consider how globally-oriented is your organisation, really? And if that sense of scale is a bit too immense to begin with, then scale it down but keep the heart of the matter – what kind of impact are we really having? If we’re not looking globally are, we at least looking culturally, locally? Community-level? I mean, you can start somewhere, right!

Ben: And that’s exactly what I wanted to ask – which is, I think all organisations do want to have impact, perhaps even on that global scale you mention millennials often aim for, but do you have any thoughts on how to get started on that?]

Mark: Well, Ben, whether we’re talking about change on the global scale or even just 1 person to another, the heart of change is this… mindset. Is your company in the business of transforming mindsets, for the better? And where and how to begin? Evaluate your own company. I’ll just list 3 quickfire tips employers can consider to get our minds moving in the direction of developing a more powerful mindset.

1) Curate best practices. When’s the last time your company identified, and refined best practices for your company?

2) Identify and experiment with talent. I’ll get a bit more into this in one of my later points, but essentially this – do you see value in people, in projects, in initiatives that no one else does? Your organisation needs to capitalize.

3) Get connected, grow community. We live in a vast yet interconnected world. There are repositories of knowledge just waiting for your organisation to be linked up with, and to contribute to.

This is just such a quick list that we could go on and on, but I believe you already begin to see where this is going – we need to refine and even transform our organisational mindsets, to be a position to impact lives, cultures, and the world, at scale. Millennials do view the impact they want to have through those lens.

Ben: Thanks for those pointers, Mark! I want to pick up on the point you made about Talent, because I think for us millennials, we are maybe in our first few jobs at this point in time in our lives, and we really begin to discover more and more about our Talents and how to professionally employ them

Mark: Absolutely, Ben. On the point of talent, I would say organisations that click well with their millennial workers are ones which are able to discern opportunities where no else is able to, or only a minority is able to. What I mean by this is the organisation is regularly on the lookout for opportunities to experiment, to push boundaries, for the sake of providing value and services to others, which previously weren’t thought possible. And the organisation achieves this unique value and service offerings by sourcing and developing the unique Talents of individuals and teams. Why organisations like this really click with millennial, is because us Millenials, generally speaking, recognize that while we have Talents, our Talents haven’t yet really been tested or refined yet. At this station of life, many millennials maybe have a couple of years of tertiary education, 1 or 2 job experiences or internships, and so the testing of their Talents has up to this point been rather mild.

Ben: Do you have an example, that perhaps illustrates this point. Because conceptually I think it makes sense, but to visualize better this point, I wonder if you have an example!]

Mark: Sure, let’s say that you, Ben, you know a little bit of yourself as a good debater or communicator for example, because you debated for your University club or maybe you did Comms for your first job. Fantastic. But do you really know how good a communicator you are, or you could be, until you’ve taken a larger stage? Until someone sees that uncut gem of prowess in you, that potential, and then gives you an environment where there is sufficient pressure, guidance, and goals etc… to help you see that you really do have it in you to shine. I don’t envy organisations in this regard because it is rather challenging to craft such “perfect” conditions – you use too much pressure, things explode, too much guidance, it’s just too handholding, too little and it’s too laisse-faire… Yet think about organisations that have still decided to model the very willingness, the very hunger, to still chase that growth through “imperfectly” iterating and pursuing these opportunities for their staff and organisation.

Ben: And I think that’s one thing that perhaps you could help our viewers process a bit more. Besides the organisational structure concerns, I think there’s an emotional element here about how change can be scary, and risk and experimentation without any guarantee of success can be unnerving. How might we process these emotions, so we don’t get paralyzed by fear or anxiety?]

Mar: It’s such a great point, Ben. I would say that those emotions of fear and anxiety can be very real when one is considering how to go about bringing about deep changes to structures and cultures in your organisation. So as a first step, to acknowledge that emotion should it arise, and to constructively confront, say with a coach, with a trusted group of friends, etc. People who won’t judge you for having those doubts and concerns, but just give you a space to air your thoughts and feelings safely. And you know, I myself am in the process of facilitating rapid transformation in one of the young adult groups that I lead. There are so many moving pieces like leadership transition, personal development plans, adjusting deliverables… and I’m the kind of person that likes to sit down and just theorycraft. Conceptualize, plan, deliberate, those are my strengths etc… but I’m learning to balance that also with a willingness to just hit the ground and run. Because scary as it is to have your concerns play it out in real life, in real time, it is also in that playing out that you can get the real data and real refinement going. Not just within the 4 walls of your head, you know?

So, in the same vein, organisations need to be able to identify and/or craft opportunities for their staff, particularly their millennial staff, where concepts, talents, etc… can really be experimented and tested, and failure may be likely, but the cost of failure is managed, and the potential for success is appropriately valued.

Ben: These thoughts are really useful, and to begin to move us towards the closing of our conversation perhaps you could share some closing thoughts on why it’s so important that organisations and their millennial workforce really integrate well]

Mark: Before I respond with my final thought, I just want to say that I think we covered a lot of big ideas today, and taking any one of those and having a think-through and then facilitating conversations, facilitating opportunities with millennials in your organisation will likely yield good results.

As to my closing thoughts, I would say the heart of the matter is this – do employers and employees engage one another in such a way that resoundingly articulates “Who YOU are matters to OUR organisation”. Given how interconnected our world is today, we are all exposed to the fact there is no shortage of millennials or others making impact in their local communities, or even on a global scale. So retaining and training the millennials who are going to help your organisation achieve that comes down to heeding the cry of their hearts of your workers: help me make a difference, for our organisation, and for the world around us.

Closing: Thank you very much for that, Mark! And thank you to all our listeners! We hope that you benefitted from this podcast on Millennials in your Organisation – a (Potentially) Powerful Transformative Force. Join us again our next episode in a few weeks’ time – [insert Title here]. Thank you, and we look forward to having you on the next Capelle Podcast. Goodbye.