Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) created a group for Millennials, to serve as an educational, professional growth, and networking resource for employees. Sodexo offers an "i-Gen" employee network group for networking, social media training, mentoring opportunities, and career management training, according to the report.
Enterprise-Rent-a-Car has a policy of promoting from within, so it's important for their training programs to offer the structure and feedback that Millennials tend to crave, having lived fully scheduled lives since their diaper days. "We've adapted it to their needs, which is a more structured training environment," says Marie Artim, Enterprise's senior vice president of talent acquisition.
Enterprise has begun to name the specific skills that trainees are acquiring as they master them. If they're learning how to manage a branch's fleet of cars to meet customers' needs, for instance, managers will point out that it's experience with logistics. "We put it into a business context when, on the surface, it may seem like it's just doing your job," she explains.
These initiatives, coupled with education and training on the distinct perspectives that different generations are likely to have, can help managers and Millennials appreciate each other's differences rather than viewing them as obstacles. The commonly repeated stereotypes about Generation Y are often based on misunderstandings, according to Rikleen and other workplace experts.
"They're probably the most misunderstood generation in the history of the world," says Brad Karsh, president of JB Training Solutions in Chicago, whose workshop "Dude, What's My Job?" helps executives understand and better manage Millennials.
Take the complaint that Millennials feel entitled and are too ambitious, wanting to be given tremendous responsibility early in their careers. Older managers expect younger workers to do their jobs, keep their heads down, and wait for their careers to advance, as they themselves did.
But these young workers have seen their parents laid off from long-time jobs, making any given position seem precarious. Rather than expecting to run the organization from day one, they merely want to start building the skills and experience they'll need to survive in a working world that is more precarious and built on shorter-term stints at each job, says Bruce Tulgan, consultant and author of Not Everyone Gets a Trophy, about how to manage Generation Y.
"They want to make an impact on day one and they want to start building themselves up using the organization's resources," Tulgan says. "They want to build relationships that will help them. They want to learn skills that can help them. They want tangible results with their name on them."
