Do you have a strategy to recruit and retain Millennials to work in your school? If not, now is the time to develop and implement one.
Millennials, also known as Generation Y, are people born between 1980 and 2000. In 2020, they will make up half of the workforce. By 2025, forecasts suggest that 75 percent of employees will come from the Millennial generation.
The popular press often belittles the traits and behaviors of this generation, but attracting the best and brightest Millennials and harnessing their skills will be essential for any organization that wants to succeed in the coming decades. Every generation can be skeptical of the values and behaviors of those that follow, but we know from research that diversity — including generational diversity — strengthens organizations. The key for your school leaders is understanding how to leverage generational norms and turn them into strengths that benefit the school as a whole.
The good news is that many attributes of independent schools are appealing to Millennials – and to people from the other generations. As you hire and recruit, consider focusing on these five approaches to best capitalize on your school’s strengths.
1. Focus on a Mission
Independent schools are driven by their mission to serve children and the greater public purpose to advance knowledge around teaching and learning. These traits will draw Millennials to independent schools, as Millennials want to make a positive difference in the world. Baby Boomers are also motivated by the opportunity to make the world a better place for their children and grandchildren.
Millennials want to understand how their particular work contributes to the mission. To drive great performance, connect the dots for employees; emphasize how each teacher and staff member’s work supports the mission and goals of the school. Research conducted by Gallup suggests that employees’ understanding of what is expected of them and how that connects to the larger organizational mission is a core pillar of engagement. Further, HR strategists note that giving employees a purpose helps them to envision a future at the organization. That future visioning is a critical retention strategy because many Millennials express less loyalty to organizations than people from other generations do.
2. Create Collaborative Learning Environments
Millennials grew up in collaborative environments, so working this way is in their DNA. In a blog in Wired Magazine, Warren Barkley, chief technology officer of SMART Technologies, notes, “The new workforce knows collaboration, needs to collaborate, and feels empowered to collaborate with anyone, anywhere. If they can’t collaborate, they leave — either to another company or off to do their own thing.” Schools can leverage this natural tendency by enhancing the collaborative environments that are already at the center of their cultures.
In an interview with Forbes magazine, Olivier Fleurot, CEO of MSLGROUP, which conducted a groundbreaking research study on Millennials in 2014, commented, “Most important in the workplace is that Millennials see their jobs as a continuation of their education experience, and expect managers to share their knowledge and to be a coach rather than a boss ‘giving instructions.’ ” In many independent schools, teachers work in teams to plan interdisciplinary lessons or to strategize around improving student outcomes. Millennials will be drawn to these types of environments, particularly if those collaborations support the Millennial desire to learn continually.
3. Foster a Work-Life Balance
Another truism about Millennials: They are looking for work-life balance. However, research shows us that all generations in the workplace now strive for balance. Baby Boomers, often sandwiched between adult children living at home and elderly parents in need of more care, are also looking for work-life balance to address these needs.
What may be the biggest challenge for schools seeking to hire Millennial employees is the number of Millennials becoming solo entrepreneurs, driven by the scarcity of jobs post-recession and this desire for balance. In a January 5, 2016, blog post in The Huffington Post, MBO Partners CEO Gene Zaino commented on recently released research on the independent workforce in America. It found that the number of Millennial independent workers is growing at a rate of 18 percent annually, compared to 8 percent growth in this sector overall. He suggested that this development portends one of the biggest changes in the workforce: The growth of the independent workforce, and the Millennials in particular, heralds a fundamental power shift in the relationship between employer and employee.
Your school will need to plan creatively to ensure you can acquire and retain needed talent in a world in which employees increasingly will want to “work to live” rather than “live to work.”
4. Carve Out Career Paths and Room for Growth
Stories of Millennials expecting promotions within months of starting a job have become rampant in the media. But many who study this generation suggest that employers need to understand how to put that ambition to work for them in productive ways. Career pathing and mentoring will be essential to retaining a school’s Millennial workforce. This generation is interested in understanding the path to advance in a career. They also want to know how performance will be assessed. If those steps are clear and assessment procedures are well laid out, Millennial workers will be much more comfortable in a workplace.
In addition, formal and informal mentoring programs are important to Millennials. Contrary to what we often hear, Millennials are interested in learning from those who went before them. Schools should consider mentoring programs that respect expertise gained through other means. For example, Boomers or Generation Xers can provide valuable knowledge from experience, while Millennials might be experts on emerging technologies or new models that could enhance effectiveness. That mentoring exchange among generations is just one example of how schools can take advantage of the diverse skills and abilities brought to a job from employees of different generations.
Finally, schools need to think more seriously about distributed leadership models. The days of one top leader in whom all power is vested are waning. Your school should experiment with new models in which many share leadership and offer opportunities to take on leadership responsibilities at many points along an employee’s career path.
5. Emphasize Retention and Feedback Loops
Millennials expect their supervisor to play a hands-on role as a coach or a mentor. This need is pushing organizations to rethink the traditional performance evaluation process. Systems that provide feedback once or twice a year will not fit the Millennial’s need for continual improvement. Supervisors must approach performance management differently, finding time in the work day to talk about employees’ work. HR professionals suggest that overall best practice in performance management is moving away from the annual evaluation and toward regular conversations embedded in work.
Overall, this is a time of great change within the workforce. The sheer numbers of Millennials entering the workforce, and their attitudes and expectations, will redefine how, when, and where work is performed. Active planning and creative thought will help independent schools thrive amid this shift.
This is a good time for your board and leadership team to engage in a generative conversation around this question: What would your school look like if you were an employer of choice for the Millennial generation?
We at NAIS would love to hear your thoughts. Does your school have a mentoring program and/or career pathing? What other strategies have you pursued to drive employee engagement? For Millennial readers, what would you recommend to make independent schools top-choice employers?
