FAQs

Disengaged workers feel no connection to their jobs and tend to do the bare minimum. SHRM (2017 – Developing and sustaining employee engagement) listed the following behaviours of disengaged workers. Disengaged employees are frequently apathetic, pessimistic, self-centred, have high absenteeism and negative attitude, are egocentric, focused on monetary compensation and are accepting credit but passing along blame. Disengagement becomes most noticeable when someone who used to be outgoing and enthusiastic at work (i.e. engaged) fall by the wayside and has nothing positive to contribute. Disengagement could also be reflected through a 9-to-5 time clock mentality and the unwillingness to participate in social events outside the office. Disengaged workers dislike their jobs, tend to moan to co-workers and drag down office morale.

Millennials are technological wizards: more than half of them would even turn down the job that denied them access to social networks (IESE Business School, 2016 – Nine tips for managing millennials). Consequently, HR practitioners suggest the following strategies to engage millennials using technology (listed in Jha, Sareen & Potnuru, 2019 – Employee engagement for millennials):  

• A link such as “My Career” on the employee’s dashboard highlighting career path and development process in the organization to show millennial workers their career growth and developmental opportunities.  
• Instant feedback communication in interesting and transparent ways. Private and public recognition like “Thumbs-up” can be used to create an atmosphere of trust, integration, and transparency in organization.  
• Application game-like features like challenges, leader boards, and badges to millennial workers’ performance assessment (i.e. Gamification). Gamification may also be implemented for making training and learning more interesting.  
• Use of a dashboard where millennials can express their views on common issues and/or to voice their decisions related to their work.  
• Employee dashboard can be designed to reflect the significance of the roles played by employees in their teams such as the positions they hold and the responsibilities they assume. Progression display enable them to analyse how their effort contributes to the overall organizational goal.  

However, millennials’ love for online communication doesn’t mean they don’t also love working face-to-face. Actually, 60% of millennials would prefer to have some form of in-person teamwork, so do not rely solely on online communication (Comaford, 2018 – 3 Strategies for Effectively Engaging Millennials). 

It’s easy to jump to the conclusion that money and perks drive engagement, but that’s not the complete picture. Money is definitely a contributing factor and has to be sufficient to enable employees do their job. If the money is insufficient, then they’ll be focused on exiting and finding a job that does pay enough money. It’s something that has to be in place before you can start having proper conversations about employee engagement (Potgieter J. in Lachs, 2016 - How To Engage Employees To Get The Best Business Results). 

Studies show that in terms of employee engagement pay fairness perception beats higher pay: fair and transparent pay process boosts employee engagement even more than providing additional pay does. Employees therefore want to know how their compensation is set. But being transparent about pay doesn't mean revealing what all employees at the company make. Employees just need to understand the process through which their salary range is determined and to believe that process is fair, not by how much someone is actually paid. Sometimes, simply having a serious discussion about pay can make the difference between an employee feeling valued or not: so your pay process has to make sense before you can communicate it to your employees. Compensation is the communication of how much we value that employee. So if they feel undercompensated, they're feeling undervalued. If you take it seriously, then you're telling them that you are serious about their value and you care about how they perceive that value (Martin C. in Miller, 2017 – Pay Fairness Perception Beats Higher Pay for Improving Employee Engagement). 

Although millennials are more interested in job growth opportunities than salary, paying fairly means a lot. They are also more comfortable talking about pay than ever before, and they have access to online resources that allow them to price their specific position. However, this doesn't necessarily mean you have to pay at or above the position's market rate. You have to be able to explain how salary ranges are set and how an employee's pay within that range is determined (Martin C. in Miller, 2017). 

The GETM3 research found out that, when it comes to offering interesting work, job enrichment is one of the ways SMEs can proceed. This essentially means expanding the job, and delegating work to employees that is typically not part of their job description. Employees of SMEs can take advantage of the different cross-functional work opportunities, which let them see the bigger picture and get a broader oversight of how the business processes operate.

It needs to be recognized that while not all tasks are interesting and the desired tasks may fall outside the scope of an employee’s job, it is desired that the employees tell their supervisors what they like doing. This shows it is important to communicate about what one finds interesting. These communications between supervisors, team-leaders and employees can be informal in nature and take place every few months and in-between employees can also maintain a diary of reflections indicating the types of tasks they enjoy doing, the new competencies they would like to acquire, etc., and then provide a foundation for possible expansions of their work tasks.  

What particularly large companies have come to know, and SMEs have adopted to a smaller extent, is allowing a portion of paid time to be spent working on own ideas. With this, employers can capitalize on employees’ creative thinking and turn side projects and initiatives into actual products and services that a company offers. SMEs could adapt this to their business needs and the lifecycle stage, and experiment with this idea on a smaller scale. Perhaps starting with assigning a specific period during a given day and setting some criteria and parameters on how the time is used (maybe be sharing relevant business challenges the organization is facing).

Existing research finds that job autonomy (i.e. self-initiative and intrinsic motivation to perform tasks) has a positive effect on the company performance, particularly among younger companies, as independence and inclusive decision-making is of high importance for motivating employees. Consequently, employees should be given the autonomy over their jobs to pursue their own interests, they should be included in the decision-making process, and they should make their own decisions.  

One way to do it is to let them build the contribution they want to make. For example, you first motivate employees to brainstorm ideas that they would like to execute in the next year. Then, each of them can present suggestions at a meeting, where ideas are evaluated in terms of feasibility, alignment with the company’s strategic goals and vision. At the next meeting, the entire team discuss the ideas once again and chose the most promising ones. This way employees are actually working on their own ideas and are practically building up the contribution they want to make.  

Another way to increase autonomy and give the opportunity for employees to pursue the work that interests them is job crafting. Job crafting encompasses changes that employees make at their job to make it more motivating and satisfying. Employees change the type, number, or scope of tasks (i.e. task crafting), they alter the amount and quality of interactions on the job depending on individual preferences, or they change the perception of work (for example, perceiving the role of a waiter not only in the sense of serving food, but also making a nice day for the customer). With these crafting behaviours, employees actually alter their level of job demands and resources. 

When employees craft their jobs, not only their self-efficacy increases, but crafting activities also increase their creativity. These behaviours are proactive in nature and self-initiated by employees themselves. It is beneficial, that supervisors encourage their employees to identify the instances where they already are altering the ways of working. This is particularly relevant for the younger employees that want interesting work, tend to pursue different aspirations and are eager to learn different things early in their careers. Offering employees the opportunity to pursue additional interests at work, which correspond with their values, is one way to prevent workplace boredom from occurring.  

Job crafting, if encouraged, can contribute to employee motivation and retention, and put employees in the position of active re-designers of their jobs to suit their values, needs, competencies, and aspirations. 

PwC (2010 – Millennials at work) surveyed more than 4.300 millennial workers to analyse their hopes and expectations. Millennials’ suggestions to their current and prospective employers are: 

• Understand millennial generation: It’s particularly important to understand and address generational differences and tensions; 
• Get the ‘deal’ right: It’s important for employers to explain what they are offering a potential millennial worker, but also what they expect in return. Think creatively about reward strategies and what motivates millennials. 
• Help millennials grow: Managers need to really understand the personal and professional goals of millennials. Put them on special rotational assignments more frequently to give them a sense that they are moving toward something and gaining a variety of experiences. 
• Feedback, feedback and more feedback: Millennials want and value frequent feedback. 
• Set them free: Millennials want flexibility. They work well with clear instructions and concrete targets. If you know what you want done by when, why does it matter where and how they complete the task? 
• Encourage learning: Millennials want to experience as much training as possible. 
• Allow faster advancement: Historically, career advancement was built upon seniority and time of service. Millennials don’t think that way.  
• Expect millennials to go: It’s inevitable that the rate of churn among millennials will be higher than among other generations, especially since many have made compromises in finding their first job, and this should be built into your plans.