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Photo: Svitlana, YFS Magazine, Adobe Stock

For Millennials, the Value of Belonging at Work is Priceless

You can build a highly productive millennial workforce if you can succeed in cultivating belongingness.


In today’s business world, we often talk about the latest or emerging workplace trends. When speaking of paradigm changes, the rampant change in workplace demographics is a much-talked-about trend. As most of us already know, the future of the corporate realm belongs to millennials. As per Deloitte, millennials are all set to represent 75 percent of the global workforce by the end of 2025.

This explains why contemporary organizations have become highly competitive in order to attract top millennial talent. As a business owner, you know that hiring top-notch talent today will certainly prove to be a competitive advantage in the future.

However, millennials are quite infamously called the job-hopping generation. They do not stay at one company for a long time and have issues when it comes to workplace engagement. So, the question is, what can employers do to facilitate greater engagement and retention among their millennial employees?

 

Promoting workplace belonging among millennials

While there can be various approaches to promoting greater engagement and retention among your millennial employees, cultivating a strong sense of belonging can be your best chance. When employees feel they belong in the workplace, their allegiance is much higher. In simple words, they show greater commitment to the organization and stay for longer to add greater value.

Photo: Svitlana, YFS Magazine, Adobe Stock
Photo: Svitlana, YFS Magazine

It is amusing to learn that as per Deloitte, a positive sense of workplace belonging can enhance the overall job performance of employees by 56 percent. Besides, it can also facilitate the pursuit of bringing down employee absenteeism by 75 percent. Having said that, it is surely worth the effort to cultivate workplace belongingness. But what does it take to foster this feeling among millennial employees? That is exactly what this blog aims to find out.

 

How to cultivate belongingness in a millennial workforce

 

Celebrate diversity and inclusion

Millennials love being a part of diverse and inclusive workplaces. Millennials are quite uncompromising when it comes to the virtues of equality and equity in the workplace. They want to know that everyone in the workplace is entitled to equal learning and advancement opportunities irrespective of any bias.

According to Kudos, around 70 percent of millennials feel that diverse workplaces are more motivating and stimulating. Hence, to engage your millennial workforce, you need to convince them to believe that they belong in the workplace irrespective of any differentiation. For that, you need to celebrate every ounce of diversity in the workplace and promote great inclusions.

Besides, there are quite a few other ways in which you can foster greater inclusion in the workplace. The same are listed below.

  • Promoting greater transparency in the workplace
  • Making decision-making more inclusive
  • Addressing workplace ethical issues immediately
  • Offering personalized rewards to employees
  • Embracing D&I activities

 

Enhance learning experiences

Millennials view their belongingness in terms of how much the organization is investing in their learning. In fact, as per Gallup, 87 percent of millennial employees assert that workplace learning and development are essential to their motivation. Having said that, to engage them and retain them, you need to optimize their learning experiences in a constant way. The mathematics here is quite simple to understand.

The more you invest in their professional development the greater the commitment they will reciprocate with. You need to find creative ways to enhance their learning experiences. For that, you can introduce thoughtful mentoring programs to create a natural learning environment.

Besides, you need to invest in the right learning technologies like LMS, VR, and so on to enhance learning experiences. Furthermore, it is also vital to know that millennials are highly receptive to feedback and expect it. Use this opportunity to blend continuous feedback sharing with employee learning experiences.

 

Promote leadership opportunities

Who does not like the idea of growth or stepping into the shoes of a leader? All of us totally love the idea of getting leadership opportunities to prove what we are capable of, isn’t it? For your millennial employees, leadership opportunities are of great value and you must deliver on this anticipation.

You can promote a greater sense of belonging among your millennial workforce by promoting greater opportunities to lead. A leadership opportunity may be as simple as leading a team during one of the employee engagement activities. Still, it will do a world of good to the confidence of your employees and make them feel valued. Also, this can be an effective way to identify the future leaders your organization can rely on.

 

Cultivate a culture of flexibility

Millennials adore the idea of workplace flexibility, and they are the happiest working for organizations that celebrate the virtue of flexibility. As per Forbes, 67 percent of millennials want to work for organizations that offer flexible working arrangements. They are of the view that flexibility enables them to achieve a greater work-life balance.

Also, it is true that many workers will rather quit their jobs if their organizations have a rigid stance toward flexibility. However, if you offer greater flexibility to your employees, it will effectively assist in fostering belongingness.

When you offer flexibility among employee benefits, you show greater trust in your employees and empower them. Here it is also vital to pay heed to what the virtue of trust can do to a workplace. As per Harvard Business Review, in organizations with high trust, employee engagement is 76 percent higher. Also, the overall productivity is 50 percent higher in high-trust organizations.

In the ultimate sense, you can create a highly productive millennial workforce if you can succeed in cultivating belongingness.

 

“Doing what you love is the cornerstone of having abundance in your life.” Wayne Dyer’s thoughts are well suited to Kiara Miller. She has been working as a content marketing professional at ‘The Speakingnerd’. Her passion for writing is also visible in the innovative joys of material she provides to her readers.

 

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