Here Come the Millennials

The Click: Campbell Mithun adapted its performance-review process to be more millennial friendly. Before any review, supervisors ask the employee to complete a self-appraisal. “This way, our supervisors can give recognition and provide specific feedback to millennials, as well as have an easier time reaffirming or expanding on growth areas,” Foley says. “There are fewer surprises this way.”

Millennials can help on the diversity front as well. Having been told their entire lives that there are no winners or losers, they have adopted the melting-pot theory as their mantra. Millennials grew up with classmates who have same-sex parents and friends who immigrated from countries around the world; this generation was raised to celebrate the differences among us, and therefore will lead the way in redefining diversity for companies.

Trait 3 – Anything You Can Do, I Can Do More Of

The last time you walked by a millennial’s desk, you probably saw him reading an online newspaper, checking e-mail, updating reports, finishing a project, scheduling an afternoon meeting, and chatting with a friend. The real mystery? How he does it all at the same time while calmly sipping a soy-milk, caramel macchiato.

As offspring of the competitive baby boomers, millennials have always heard that in order to stand out from the crowd, they would have to pack in as much as possible. By the time they entered high school and juggled three after-school sports, tuba lessons, advanced-placement calculus, drama, and volunteer activities at the local nursing home, we recognized that this generation was born to multitask.

The Clash: Many millennials find the typical corporate pace to be like a cup of decaf. The challenge for employers isn’t solely how to pack the job with enough stimuli to get millennials through the day; they must think about how to repackage and redesign career paths so that these young workers won’t leave at the first sign of boredom. Beth Leonard, a baby-boomer partner on the management committee of Minneapolis accounting and consulting firm Lurie Besikof Lapidus & Company, remembers a different experience when she was a new hire: “We had to work in a narrow practice area and repeat that task several times until we were good at it, without regard to understanding or differentiating skill. Only then would we even be considered to move on to something else.”

In the past, employees would stay in a position for a few years before considering a rotation. Now, managers complain that just when they’ve finally learned the new hire’s name, Dustin—or was it Dylan?—is asking when he can move on to something new.

The Click: Today at Lurie Besikoff Lapidus, when new employees join the 130-person firm, they work on multiple assignments at the same time in a variety of industries not predicated on their previous experience or job title. “It was hard at first for many of the partners, who always want new hires to have a lot of experience in one specific arena,” Leonard says. “But when we saw our job-acceptance rate go to the 90th percentile, we all got on board.”

Ecolab in St. Paul has also acknowledged the value of multitasking millennials. “We’ve started numerous special-project teams on top of the regular workloads,” says Kris Taylor, director of community and public relations at Ecolab. “Where some may be overwhelmed to sign up for one more project on their to-do list, we found that millennials jumped at the opportunity to get involved in a special project and were more engaged and excited because they were asked to participate.”