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.

So what does this mean for you in HR and talent management?
Read the full article here >

That’s our take … what’s yours? We want to hear from you – especially if you are a member of Gen X or a Millennial. Send us your comments, and we will continue the dialogue.

1. Claim your name everywhere to build credibility with customers and search engines. Not only do you need Facebook and Twitter accounts, but you’ll need to stake your claim on Google+ and LinkedIn with company pages as well.

2. Have clear month-by-month goals and make sure to get trained in social media tools early in the year. Make plans to meet your goals month-to-month and be sure to assign the proper resources to it.

3. Use free tools like Klout, Google Analytics, and Hootsuite to measure your social media progress. Crunch the numbers: track numbers of visitors and evaluate your social media usage.

4.Think about hiring an expert in social media development or take a course in social media literacy. A growing number of companies are creating social media literacy programs, ranging from Dell, Intel, Unisys and Telstra. We expect more companies to make social media training mandatory for all employees and new hires.

5. Add direct links of  your social media pages on all your printed materials. Once you’ve got your social media profiles set up, make sure that you’re letting people know about them by adding links to your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ pages to all your business cards, brochures, fliers, and any other printed materials, as well as presentation files and infographics.

Of course if you want to gain some hands-on experience in making these strategies work for your organization and at Future Workplace we have created Social Learning Boot Camp this March 19-20th hosted by IESE Business School in New York City. This Boot Camp also includes a complimentary iPad2 for the first 50 attendees. Hope to see you in New York City in March!

In the meantime, share here with us what your organization is doing to build social media literacy among all employees.

The results from the 2011 Cisco Connected World Technology Report are in – and they may surprise you.

Cisco interviewed 2,853 respondents including 1,441 college students (18 to 24 years old) and 1,412 new college graduates (21 to 29 years old) across 14 countries.

These five top-line findings are worth a discussion with your team:

1. One-third of respondents would accept a lower-paying job that had more flexibility with regard to device choice, social media access and mobility than a higher-paying job with less flexibility.
2. Two of five students have NOT bought a physical book (except text book) in two years.
3. Two-thirds of respondents will ask about a company’s social media policies during the job interview and 56 percent will not accept a job from a company that bans social media access from work or will circumvent this policy.
4. 41 percent of employees say their company marketed a flexible device and social media policy to recruit them to work at the organization.
5. Three out of 10 respondents feel that once they begin working, it will be their right, more than a privilege, to be able to work remotely with a flexible schedule.

The Cisco Connected World Technology Report is rich with a lot of data on what millennials want, need and expect from an employer. After reading the report, ask yourself: What are you going to recommend your organization start doing and stop doing to better address the needs of millennial employees?

The Cisco Connected World Technology Report is rich with a lot of data on what millennials want, need and expect from an employer. After reading the report, ask yourself: What are you going to recommend your organization start doing and stop doing to better address the needs of millennial employees? Here is our short list:

START …

• Researching your own employee needs, just as you research your customer needs. For every effort your company makes in researching your customers, expend an equal effort in probing the needs, desires and demands of your current and prospective employees. Almost any technology that is used to research customers, such as data mining and social networks, can be flipped to be used for researching employee needs. Companies that best understand and anticipate the needs of its employees will attract, and most likely retain, the best talent.
• Exploring flexibility about the use of mobile devices. The days of distributing a locked down, standard laptop and mobile phone are long gone. Millennials expect to BYOT (Bring Your Own Technology) to work and will insist on this as a way to increase their productivity.

STOP …

• Believing you can “control” social media use. Millennials will find a way to circumvent whatever closed social media policy gets in their way of being open, collaborative and social in the workplace.
• Being afraid of having your employees work remotely. In other words, start trusting your employees to work, learn and collaborate where, when and how they can be most productive. This will require new policies for alternative work arrangements. Managers will need to learn how to manage virtual teams. The 2020 workplace is here today.

Share with us your reaction to this report, questions it raises and what you and your organization will start doing and stop doing.