Millennials! You know who they are. Those disengaged employees who simply show up, do their jobs, go home, and don’t give their work a second thought. Conversely, there are the fully engaged employees. They are clearly passionate about what they do, why they do it and notably, the impact their work is having on the world around them.
Unfortunately, high employee engagement among millennials—the largest workforce in the U.S.—is proving to be the exception and not the norm. A recent Gallup poll of more than one million participants revealed that less than one-third of millennials (only 29%) are engaged in their jobs.
The data also underscores the critical difference of employee engagement. The business units in the top quartile of employee engagement realizes multiple key benefits that directly impact the bottom line. Specifically, they:
- Enjoy 17% higher productivity
- Experience 41% less absenteeism
- Have 10% better customer ratings
- Have 70% fewer safety incidents
- Are 21% more profitable than business units in the bottom quartile
Millennials make up 38% of the current workforce and are expected to account for a staggering 75% of America’s labor pool within 10 years. This is why today’s savvy forward-thinking employers are seeking innovative strategies to increase employee engagement among millennials to benefit everyone.
What Drives Millennial Employee Engagement?
If we want to find the best ways to engage millennials, it’s first important to understand why current engagement levels are so low. In order for engagement to occur, an employee must feel a sense of purpose in their work. While this can take many forms, one form is empowering employees to make a meaningful and quantifiable impact in helping address environmental and social issues.
Confidence in their leaders is also critical for employee engagement. A survey conducted by Australian startup, Culture Amp, found that fully 74% of respondents consider confidence in their leadership as a key driver of engagement. What is the good news in all of this? The ball sits squarely in the company’s court within its own span of control.
Make It Meaningful
For millennials, making a difference isn’t exclusively about money. Simply passing around a cup for charitable donations won’t cut it to get staff fully invested in a cause. Rather, there must be a direct, hands-on connection with the problem, issue or goal being addressed.
Millennials are motivated to give of themselves and their talents—not just their money. One innovative new online platform and app, Xocial, is partnering with businesses and organizations to facilitate exactly that.
Can Xocial Really Help?
In short, Xocial makes it possible for all companies to achieve corporate social responsibility and build a socially conscious company culture through fun and simple xocial “campaigns.”.
Leveraging a concept they refer to as “competitive kindness,” Xocial actually measures each participant’s favorable contributions with a “XO Score.” This points system serves as a numeric benchmark for comparison (and friendly competition). It is a calculation representing the direct impact or result of a person’s, team’s and entire company’s xocial campaign.
A company can initiate a campaign by setting up a Xocial profile page supporting their particular goal or cause . The company also specifies various “challenges” that employees can undertake to earn points in support of the goal or cause earmarked for the campaign.
For example, if a company’s goal is to improve staff physical fitness and, in doing so, lower the city’s escalating obesity rates (and mortality and economic concerns related thereto), challenges might include skipping the elevator and taking only the stairs, drinking eight glasses of water a day, or taking a local exercise class during the lunch break.
As challenges are completed, points are tallied and a leader board is displayed on the company’s campaign profile page. All visitors to the page (including the public) can see what the company and its employees have accomplished. Since Xocial makes charitable activities trackable, it provides that much-needed direct emotional connection between activity and impact. This encourages people to give of themselves, not just their money, in order to positively impact society.
The Final Word
Whether a company seeks third party solutions or chooses to curate an approach in-house, the overarching initiative must accomplish key concerns. This includes giving employees a sense of purpose and empowerment, while giving management a confidence boost. A solid program will also facilitate team-building endeavors and curate staff pride in the organization. As a result, it will also build excitement within the company culture, itself.
Shoot. Most of them will never pick up the phone to communicate business needs to another employee. They’ll email, if they respond at all, and wonder why you have to call them because their email made no sense nor did it it even address the question in the first place. First thing I think we need to do to help them is install remedial social skills classes during the work day.
I strongly disagree with the tone of your comments, and this article in general. And come to think of it, most articles i read on this subject. I would hope that with wraths of people coming into the workforce ‘disengaged’ people might start to think of the problem and that, on the whole, we have organisations that stifle and stagnate people. This is the fault of the generations of people that have created organisations that are simply there to do nothing else but make money!! Making money does not engage the vast majority of people and this is certainly true… Read more »