By 2025, 75% of the entire workforce will be millennials. How can you increase employee retention among a workforce that has an average tenure of just two years? 

While the cost of employee turnover is high, most organisations lack a formal strategy to retain millennials and Generation Z.  

Here are 5 secret recipe ingredients to help engage and retain millennials.

1. Start with Great Onboarding

A well-designed onboarding programme is key to increasing employee retention among these generations. Set clear expectations during the hiring process about what your new employee can expect from their role.

Does your onboarding start pre-employment? If it doesn’t, consider including your new employee in a programme, project, event, coffee meet-up or outing to foster a sense of team belonging.

Focus on what matters to millennials and Generation Z: company values and mission; career and personal development and mentoring.

2. Demand Excellence in Managers

Make sure to provide training, coaching and feedback, especially to front line managers, who are one of the biggest influences on retention.

Have you trained your people managers on how to engage the different generations? If not, it’s time to invest in their development so they can successfully manage a multi-generational workforce.

Make sure you also help millennials make the transition from individual contributor to people manager. 

3. Focus on the Big Picture

The operational aspects of a role are important, but what really helps engage millennials is focussing on the company vision.  

Introduce the company’s values, culture, goals and strategy early and make sure your employees’ goals align with that big picture.

Empower your employees by making them “part of the engine, not a cog in the wheel.”  This is key for millennials as they want to feel they have a purpose and an impact on the bigger picture. They want to share wins, losses and feel part of a greater purpose.

4. Give and Seek Regular Feedback

Have you got a feedback culture in place? If not, consider how performance management can incorporate continuous feedback for millennials.

Millennials and Generation Z appreciate and feel empowered by timely and regular feedback. If you’re leaving feedback until the mid-year or annual review, it’s too late.

Tandem HR Solutions says organisations need to move away from “outdated performance management practices” and that regular, clear feedback is a necessity between managers and teams.  

5. Start with Why

Millennials are leaving companies quicker than previous generations. It’s important to build a retention strategy that asks why they’re leaving and what can be done differently.

The exit interview, for example, would be best focussed on why they’re leaving your organisation rather than what attracted them to their new company.

This will give you meaningful insights and trends to feed back into the organisation to help reduce employee turnover.

Download the Whitepaper – Redesign the Workplace for Millennials & Gen Z 

Bringing it all Together

Talivest is tailored to engage with millennials. Our solution helps you understand why your employees are leaving, stay connected with them and re-hire high performing millennial alumni. This will help you reduce recruitment costs, boost productivity and bolster your company’s innovation pool.