Four keys to recruiting and retaining millennial talent

By 2025, millennials will make up 75 per cent of the global workforce. As employees, millennials are confident, empowered and ready to switch jobs. We recently hosted a webinar to learn how you can ensure you keep top-performing millennials.

Finding the right staff for your business and keeping hold of high-performers is a critical challenge for organisations of all sizes. Recent research from professional services firm PwC found 80 per cent of CEOs are worried about the availability of key skills they need from employees. As millennials - those born between 1981 and 1996 - start to dominate the workforce, the ability of organisations to recruit and retain the best of this generation’s talent will go a long way to determining their future success.

In our recent webinar Millennials: the new force in B2B buying, we spoke to three millennial professionals about how organisations can attract and keep employees from this generation.
Ryan Jenkins, author and speaker on multi-generational workplaces, identified four areas that companies can work on to keep millennial workers satisfied.

Employer branding
The first is employer branding. “Millennial candidates bring their expectations of effortless and seamless experience with them on their job search. That means you need to build a strong brand on social channels such as LinkedIn and ensure your mobile presence is first rate,” Ryan said.
Chris Heard, a digital producer for global creative agency Imagination, says that an organisation’s approach to social responsibility is important for him and his peers. “Companies that do the right thing for their staff and for the broader community have a big impact on me. Those are the types of organisations that appeal to millennials as employers,” he said.

Learning and development
“Learning and development opportunities are the number one influence on how millennials choose who to work for, the top reason why they leave,” Ryan said. “Organisations should ensure they offer on-demand, mobile first, micro-learning solutions to meet this demand.”
Development opportunities don’t have to be constrained to training. Laura Doonin, GM of Digital at Pharmacy 4 Less, says that having a challenge is vital. “I want to have accountability so I as an individual can have an impact and add value to the company.”
“If a company can continue to offer challenges and opportunities, that’s the best way to retain people, but if they stop engaging with employees then that’s when people start to look elsewhere,” Chris said.

Work/Life balance
Work-life balance is not a new concept but it is very important to millennials. “This is the first generation that will choose a city before they choose a job, Ryan said. “Mobile technology means that often people don’t have to move locations to work for their ideal company. The best organisations will think of ‘workspaces’ rather than ‘workplaces’”.

Employee experience
Technology has also enabled employees to find jobs more easily than ever before. “Organisations should focus on the experience they offer their staff because employees are now far more empowered than they were. They are only a swipe away from finding the employment experience they want,” Ryan said.
As Laura said, loyalty to the job is not completely dead among Millennials but the experience has to work for both parties. “Millennials have the self-belief to know that if a job isn’t right for them, then they can find another one. However, I don’t think people want to change jobs all the time for the sake of change. For the right role, I would love to commit to a company and be there for the long term.”

To discover more insights from our experts, and find out how you can attract and retain millennial talent watch the full webinar here.