Millennials are more outspoken than previous generations and ask what employers want from them.
How to win with millennials in a tight labor market
Millennials are more outspoken than previous generations and ask what employers want from them.
When it comes to attracting top technical talent, every detail is important in the employee experience. Karen Roby from TechRepublic spoke to Melissa Arronte from Medallia about what employers should keep in mind. The following is an edited transcript of their interview.
SEE: Recruiting and hiring top talent: a guide for business leaders (free PDF) (TechRepublic)
Melissa Arronte: I think so much is about the experiences of employees. What happens daily, how they feel treated. I like to talk about an abbreviation. It is RAVE, R-A-V-E. Respect, appreciate, appreciate and powerful. And I think millennials have been more or less stereotyped about this than previous generations. I think we all want the same thing. I just think millennials have found another way to express it and ask for it. And I think some of them become stereotyped because they may be too aggressive in the workplace. They will say, “Oh, within a few months of joining, they are asking for a pay raise.” They really ask for feedback and recognition so that they know how they are doing. They just ask in a different way.
Karen Roby: What does this generation of employees ask for? What is important to them?
Melissa Arronte: Well, I think it’s the same for millennials and for all of us. We want to be part of something that is bigger than ourselves. We want to feel that we are making a contribution, that we are making progress on something that is important to us. I mean, that’s really how Forrester defines the employee experience, is able to make progress on the work that we find important. And I think what happened, especially when you talk about technology, is that it’s really outdated within companies because it’s so expensive to upgrade. But our expectations, especially for younger people who have not had to work with a dot-matrix printer, for example, which they hold in their hands every day in their phones, is so much more powerful than anything they have at work. Their expectations are really rising. And it is an important part of the fact that the employee experience is enabled to deliver to your customers, to make progress in working with data technology.
Karen Roby: It seems pretty simple, but people just want to be happy.
Melissa Arronte: I think it’s happiness, it’s fulfillment. It feels like you’re doing something useful. If you only do a part of a process and you never see the final result, I think it causes a lack of happiness. Because you do not feel that you have done something that has meaning, that has contributed to someone else’s life.
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