By next year, Millennials are expected to comprise 36% of the U.S. workforce, and by 2020, Millennials will be nearly half of all workers. According to Forbes Magazine, Millennials are both “the most educated and culturally diverse of any generation” and “notorious job-hoppers who dislike bureaucracy and distrust traditional hierarchies.” Given this, it is crucial for manager to understand how best to motivate and engage Millennials.

In a recent article, Forbes Magazine described seven ways to motivate Millennials:

1. Explain The Company Vision: Millennial workers are more likely to look for meaning and impact in their work and aren’t satisfied simply punching a clock. Helping them understand their role in a larger plan gives them a clearer sense of purpose.

2. Prioritize Community Service: Millennials place a higher priority on helping people in need (21%) than having a high-paying career (15%). Allowing employees to form committees and use company resources or time to organize their causes meets their desire for social consciousness.

3. Develop In-Between Steps And Titles: Millennials are especially eager to progress in their careers and less willing to wait three to five years for a promotion. By developing in-between steps and titles, managers can meet their desire for career progression.

4. Give Encouragement And Regular Feedback: This generation responds well to encouragement and immediate feedback. Make it clear from the beginning that you reward good work, and then keep an open line of communication to let them know how they’re doing and how they can improve.

5. Offer More Flexibility: Work-life balance is one of the most significant drivers of employee retention among Millennials. This tech-savvy generation is essentially able to work anytime from anywhere with an Internet connection. Thus, seemingly arbitrary work hours or having to sit at a desk all day is less appealing to them.

6. Provide Education And Professional Development: Most Millennials are hungry and want to advance. Assigning stretch projects, bringing in speakers or sending employees to leadership conferences will be especially helpful for those millennial workers interested in learning and growing their skills.

7. Give Them Time For Personal Projects: Offer employees time to work on a project of their choosing. This will help Millennials feel more engaged and in control and also can boost innovation within the company

For more on each of this steps, click here for the full article.

Listening implies an active process of paying attention to what someone else is saying. According to Fast Company magazine, most companies don’t do nearly as much of that as they should, primarily because it’s more complicated to do.

Companies often believe they are listening because they are engaging in extensive online monitoring of digital communications and social media, and are aware of the conversations happening about their brand. However, listening requires more. Listening necessitates an active process of paying attention to what is being said, and developing an understanding of the people you’re communicating with.

As Sam Ford, coauthor of the new book Spreadable Media, writes:

Companies that hear and don’t listen often:

• know that a shift in perception has happened but have no strong idea as to why
• realize that there’s been a rise of interest in the company but little about what larger trends are driving that new interest
• can track what happened with a crisis after the fact but have little chance of seeing a crisis coming
• miss out on new business opportunities because they are tracking only what people are saying about the company and not understanding patterns in the lives of their customers beyond mentions of their brand

For more, click here to read the full article.

The number of CEO’s joining social media platforms is on the rise. However, a new study indicates that many are still unconvinced. While there is no question that an online presence has it’s benefits–such as engaging customers and employees–not all are convinced that it will increase their bottom line or benefit their brand.

As Forbes.com reports:

For every aspirational leadership rationale for signing up ─ to present an authentic face, get closer to customers, engage employees ─ there are pragmatic reasons still keeping the majority away.

Some simply don’t see the cost-benefit of the personal commitment. Others turn away due to the risk of well-documented personal attacks, disclosure issues or media scrutiny from off-the-cuff commentary.

For the full article, click here.

Since its inception in 2010, Marsh University has proven a valuable tool for Marsh employees, as well as for the company as a whole. In fact, Marsh now leads in employee engagement across all Marsh & McLennan companies. According to Ben Brooks, Marsh’s SVP and Global Director, Enterprise Communications and Colleague Engagement, some of the other benefits realized include:

• Improved performance on growth initiatives.
• Year-over-year improvement in career and employee development.
• Improved perception of leadership.
• Reinvigorated company culture.

To learn more about how this social solution was implemented, as well as the three keys to Marsh University’s success, please click here to read the full article.

Andrew begins a recent blog post by stressing the inefficient ways employees of the federal government experience training and education, and by suggesting three forces that will shape the future of learning for federal government. These include:

1. Informal learning is the new normal (i.e. Google searches, YouTube videos, LinkedIn / Quora / GovLoop question and answer).
2. The real experts are in cubicles, not classrooms (meaning that we learn less from people who stand in front of us in a classroom and more from our colleagues online and in-person).
3. Social networks are the perfect, perpetual classroom (you don’t need to wait for the next training – you can learn right here, right now).

Social Learning Boot Camp Modeled Social Learning

With that background as context, Andrew participated in the Social Learning Boot Camp hosted by    Future Workplace at Georgetown University. First Andrew shared how the Boot Camp was not just another conference, but really an executive education session which successfully modeled a new way of learning, one that is social, collaborative and mobile.

Here is what Andrew had to say about his experience at the Social Learning Boot Camp:

• Participants were encouraged to engage in pre-work that got them to interact with one another and primed them for in-person engagement
• Pre-work was incentivized through gaming and that online interaction was incorporated into the in-person session.
• Each participant received an iPad and was taught how to use it throughout the session.
• Participants broke into teams and used the iPad in a hands-on, real-time activity where they created a sample learning video to explain a concept or challenge – in under an hour!

In addition to these practical elements of the training, participants heard from practitioners who shared case studies about enterprise-level learning through internal social networks and gaming. I’d like to give a special shout-out to the Defense Acquisition University, who presented on their cutting-edge gaming endeavors.

Key Learning Points from the Boot Camp

Some other gems I heard in conversations and presentations throughout the day:

• “We are canceling more instructor-led, classroom-based courses than we are putting on due to tightened budgets and restricted travel.”
• Employers are increasingly expecting their potential hires to demonstrate social media literacy (or training them in that subject)…and applicants are increasingly expecting an open, social environment that welcomes online engagement as part of work flow.
• The top 3 barriers to adoption of social learning in an organization are: a culture that’s not ready for it, confusion about its value, and lack of training on its use.
• It is not fear of technology, but fear of transparency that inhibit social learning.
• Culture change happens when an organization identifies the committed leaders, communicates the benefits, and creates social media literacy training programs
• Social media / learning policy should explain the value, not just the do’s and don’ts (see socialmediagovernance.com for examples)

Why the Real-Time Video Project Was Successful

The videos created by participants were great examples of how quick, easy and effective it can be to prepare video for the purpose of training as they were:

• Created in real-time for just-in-time learning
• Authentic because it wasn’t over-edited
• Involved focused, fast production (vs. a long, drawn-out process)
• Fostered collaborative, social work to get it done
• “…not just a tech thing” as most of the production process was a dialogue about challenges (45 minutes) that culminated in a tech-enabled product (5 minutes)

One of the groups even used an app called Magisto to add music and some editing – all in just a few minutes – to take their video to the next level.

The next Social Learning Boot Camp is scheduled for:

March 7-8th, 2013

Georgetown University

Washington DC

Learn more and register here:
Social Learning Boot Camp