Guest blogger, Marty Zwilling, founder & CEO of Startup Professionals, talks about what Gen Y can do for your company.

[caption id="attachment_624" align="alignright" width="240" caption="Photo by debaird"][/caption]

What positives do millennials (Gen Y) bring to your company, and how do you deal most productively with them? Everyone is quick to point out the shortcomings and idiosyncrasies of millennials, but I see some attractive attributes from a business perspective, including the following:

• Confidence. Raised by parents believing in the importance of self-esteem, they characteristically consider themselves ready to solve the world’s problems and leap tall buildings.
• Goal and achievement oriented. Many millennials arrive at their first day of work with personal goals on paper. They expect a workplace that is technically challenging, creative, fun, and financially rewarding.
• Collaborative. Millennials are used to being organized in teams—and to making certain no one is left behind. A minor consideration is that their favorite collaboration tool is Facebook.
• Multicultural. They expect to earn a living in a workplace that is fair to all, where diversity is the norm—and they’ll use their collective power if they feel someone is treated unfairly.
• Civic-minded. They were taught to think in terms of the greater good. They have a high rate of volunteerism. They expect companies to contribute to their communities—and to operate in ways that create a sustainable environment.

Your challenge, then, is to capitalize on these positive attributes in your business. Here are six management strategies and work environment considerations which I believe you will find good for your business, as well as effective in attracting, retaining, and motivating millennial workers:

[caption id="attachment_625" align="alignright" width="240" caption="Photo by Darth87"][/caption]

1. Provide real leadership. This generation has grown up with structure and supervision, with parents who were role models. Millennials are looking for leaders with honesty and integrity. It’s not that they don’t want to be leaders themselves, they’d just like some great role models first.
2. Challenge your employees. Millennials want learning opportunities. They want to be assigned to projects they can learn from. A recent Randstad employee survey found that “trying new things” was the most popular item. They’re looking for growth, development, a career path.
3. Foster family relationship with workers. Millennials say they want to work with people they click with. They like being friends with coworkers. Consider setting up a mentoring and reverse mentoring program to foster relationships between workers of different generations.
4. Make the workplace fun and enjoyable. A little humor, a bit of silliness, even a little irreverence will make your work environment more attractive. Design office space so that millennials are set up physically to share ideas.
5. Show respect to everyone. Millennials expect their approaches and ideas to be treated with respect, even though they are new and inexperienced. Consider assigning projects to groups of employees who are evaluated as a group for reaching a goal. They love praise as the highest sign of respect, so use it constructively.
6. Be flexible. The busiest generation ever isn’t going to give up its activities just because of jobs. A rigid schedule is a sure-fire way to lose your millennial employees. Take advantage of the lessons already learned by many startups, who have flexible work weeks, flexible start times, and work at home opportunities.

With millennials, all the experts suggest the key is to get to know each as an individual, find out what is important to him or her, why they’re working, what they want to get out of their jobs. It will also help to set goals with each of them for the next 60 days or so, with a reward at the end, so that when you assign tasks, they can see where accomplishing that task will take them.

In this uncertain economy and highly competitive business environment, companies around the world recognize that the differentiator is their people. The millennials are here – you can’t ignore them. Make your millennials your competitive edge.