Managing Millennials in the Light Industrial Workforce

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From their sky-high student loans to their adult years spent living with mom and dad, millennials get a lot of flack. Before you show your age, examine a little of the millennial mindset. A recent Gallup Poll of millennial workers sheds some light on what managers need to understand about the millennials who are part of your light industrial workforce staffing.

Be a Hands-On Manager

Helicopter parents and interactive school teachers and administration have brought your millennial workforce this far. If it seems to you that millennials require more hand-holding that previous generations, you’re not exactly wrong, but your attitude may be; millennials have grown up in a culture where recognition of their individuality is a given. Be prepared to manage your millennial employees in a more interactive and open way, doing lots of listening and giving plenty of feedback.

Be More Than a “Work” Manager to Keep Them

One of the most distressing — for managers anyway — findings of the Gallup Poll was the relative lack of loyalty that millennials feel toward employers. A telling statistic of the poll is that 62 percent of millennials who plan to be with their current employer more than a year from now state they can talk to their managers about non-work-related issues. Whether it’s cynicism born of coming of age during the Great Recession or just a difference in values, the millennial mindset requires more than just work engagement for loyalty. If you want to keep them, you have to be interested in them as people, not just as a means to an end.

Be a Millennial’s First Manager

If it seems that millennials have some strange notions about the workforce, it’s really not their fault. A struggling economy has meant fewer “training” job experiences for young workers, so the days when you could count on a young adult to have a little bit of job experience are in the past. The Gallup Poll found that millennials are entering the workforce later than previous generations and have the highest rates of unemployment and underemployment of any work-age generation. For managers, that means you shouldn’t expect new light industrial hires of the under-30 set to have much, if any, paid job experience.

One area of employment where millennials tend to thrive is temporary employment. Staffing Partners’ temporary and temp-to-hire recruitment experts are ready to help you fill your open positions with the best and brightest of every generation. Give us a call today to see how they can help you with your Oregon hiring needs.

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