What do Millennial employees want at work?

By Bhanu Chopra

According to a recent Deloitte's Millennial Survey, only 28 per cent of Millennials (individuals born between 1980 to 1999) feel that their current organization is making full use of their skills. This shortcoming is largely based on the fact that companies have not understood what Millennials really want. Millennials are driven by a very different set of needs and desires than earlier generations.
To make full use of their skills, it is very important for a company to be more cognizant of what Millennials want.

1) Culture: Workplace culture is essentially what the company stands for and the qualities, traits and values that create the soul of a company.

Millennials are not keen on working at organizations where negativity and pessimism thrive. A toxic workplace leads to stress and bad blood and a company with such a culture is likely to see high attrition. Youngsters are willing to work for a little less money if the work culture of a company is great, but not vice versa. They want their office to be a space where they are enthused and happy and are among people they can love working with.

2) Independence: Millennials enjoy their freedom and this influences their expectations from work. While they desire accountability and guidance from a superior, they prefer getting the job done on their own. Independent employees are great self-motivators. Millennials like being independent because it allows them to showcase their creativity and problem-solving ability.

3) Office setting: The millennial-centric office has to be modern, tasteful and above all functional. Office settings have a clear role to play in employees' productivity. Employees want office spaces to enable collaboration, break-up spaces that can be used for informal chats and private desks for enhanced focus. Millennials take pride in where they work and the office must be a place where they love spending time. For over a year now we have been looking into this as a priority and we have made investments in making our workplace lively and work worthy.

4) Flexible work hours: Working from 9 to 5 is passé for millennials. This is especially true for metro cities, where commuting during peak hour is often very time consuming. At RateGain, we do not have fixed hours of work and only stipulate the minimum duration an employee needs to be in the office. An employee is given the flexibility to plan his or her day according to what suits them the best. After all it's the productivity that counts and not the number of hours you remain in office.

5) Leadership: Millennials look up to the leaders and they believe a good leader can steer a company to greatness. More than anything else, Millennials look at leaders as mentors and look up to them for guidance and feedback in achieving their vision. We understand that Millennials also aspire to be leaders some day and they look up to the management to show them the path, which is why we have our own RG Training and Development Network. These training programs are designed to provide a mix of technology related, leadership, interpersonal and experiential learning.

6) Empowerment: For Millennials to commit towards the vision of the company, they need to feel empowered. It is critical to let millennials experiment and discover their own way. This may call for course correction at times, but it always proves to be a great learning experience for the employee. This inspires creativity, teaches employees to take decisions and own the results and above all - makes them passionate towards work.

7) Dynamic work profile: Millennials like to stay ahead of the curve and they believe a changing work profile or tasks beyond their profile contribute to their growth as professionals.

8) International exposure: This is the age of global mobility and millennials love jobs that allow them to see the world. Millennials seek international exposure as it allows them to develop new perspectives and grow their capabilities.

9) Extra perks: Millennials think differently about remuneration and companies need to understand what kind of perks would motivate them. For instance, a good leave policy, options to work from home or remotely and health care benefits are perks that millennials look for. Millenials are creative and ambitions. If you want to make the most of their talent you need to create a magnetic workplace to attract as well as retain them.

(The author is Founder & CEO at RateGain)