Outlay vs. Outcome Debate for Employee Engagement

Companies spend a lot of money in employee engagement activities. But, just a strategy isn’t enough. There should be a way to measure returns on investment.

Every revenue exercise goes through the intense debate of Outlay vs. Outcome. Outlay refers to the amount of expenditure and outcome focuses on consequences. Unfortunately, most budgets focus solely on the outlay part of planning strategies.

Much has been said about the holy grail of employee engagement and the impact it can and has on business success. But the subjectivity around employee engagement continues to linger.

How can CHRO’s calculate the return on investments made to engage their workforce?

How can enterprises ensure that the investment that it has made in terms of money, time and effort has achieved a worthwhile result or increased value in the future?

The Outlay Approach

According to Bersin and Associates, $720 Million a year is spent on employee engagement.

It is estimated that this investment will grow to about $1.5 billion! (Source – TLNT).

This is a massive amount spent on measuring employee engagement. Most of this money is spent on reward programs, benefits and incentives. The Incentive Marketing Association also reports $46 Billion being spent on recognition programs every year!

Engaged employees take fewer sick days, deliver increased productivity, are more likely to stay in their jobs, have greater understanding of their customer’s needs and are more likely to recommend their company and its product to other people.

~Thomas Otter, Group Vice President, SAP – SuccessFactors

To understand the ROI of employee engagement, let us first look at what are the opportunity costs that disengagement can lead to. The reason why companies spend so much on employee engagement is because there is a cost (quite a huge one) when it comes to having a disengaged workforce.

A disengaged employee costs an organization approximately $3400 for every $10,000 in annual salary!

If we talk about ROI in terms of employees, an investment in the workforce should help employees to achieve their full potential, improve their motivation and make them more engaged – all of which will help an organization successfully achieve its goals. As per Sage, the difference between engaged and disengaged workers can equate to success or failure and disengaged employees are estimated to cost the U.S. economy as much as $350 billion per year in lost productivity, accidents, theft and turnover!

Studies that show the link between employee engagement and business revenues

Numerous studies show a direct correlation between employee engagement and business results.

– A 2013 Blessing White study demonstrated a correlation between engagement and retention and found that 85% of engaged employees planned to remain with their employer for ten or more months.

– Gallup Consulting also discovered that high-engagement firms grow their earnings-per-share (EPS) at a faster rate of 28%, while low-engagement firms experienced an average EPS growth rate decline of 9.4%.

– David Mcleod and Nita Clarke had conducted a study for the UK government which found that companies with low engagement scores earn an operating income 32.7% lower than companies with more engaged employees. Also, companies with a highly engaged workforce experience a 19.2% growth in operating income over a 12 month period.

The Outcome Approach

Are you creating a Service Profit Chain?

It all starts with the fact that companies need to create an environment where employees are happy. If employees are unhappy and disengaged, they will not give their best, which will hamper the quality of products and services. In the absence of good products and services, customers will also be unhappy – not forgetting to mention that disengaged employees will also not treat customers’ right. Without good customer service, a company will never be able to repeat business from them.

In terms of profits, a study by the Corporate Leadership Council found out that engaged companies grow profits as much as 3X faster than their competitors!

There are some key aspects to consider which justify why enterprises need to focus more on outcome, rather than just laying down the budget to be allocated every year to employee engagement initiatives.

1. Employee turnover

The rate of employee turnover of your organization could cost you heavily! As per a study by the Centre for American Progress, it costs businesses about one-fifth of a worker’s salary to replace that worker. For businesses that experience a high level of turnover, this cost could be a massive amount! Very highly paid jobs at the senior or executive levels tend to have disproportionately high turnover costs as a percentage of salary (upto 213%)! Workforce policies that improve employee retention can help companies reduce their turnover costs.

Employee turnover rates can make you pay through your nose.

The cost of employee turnover could be very high in terms of its direct and indirect costs. Direct costs include –

– Separation costs such as exit interviews, severance pay, and higher unemployment taxes, etc.

– The costs of temporarily covering an employee’s duties such as overtime for other staff or temporary staffing.

– Replacement costs such as advertising, screening applicants, verification costs, etc.

Indirect costs could include –

– Lost productivity due to the need to hire temporary employees

– Coping with a vacancy or giving additional work to other employees

– Reduced morale, etc.

2. Absenteeism

According to Absenteeism: The Bottom Line Killer – a publication from Circadian, absenteeism roughly costs $3,600 per year for each hourly worker and $2,650 each year for salaried employees.

The main causes of absenteeism are stress related – 1 million US employees miss work each day due to workplace stress. As per a study by Hay Group, engagement is a great predictor of future financial performance. Engagement affects business outcomes and business outcomes affect engagement. The two are closely correlated and symbiotic. In good times, engagement is bolstered by high profits, in difficult times, engagement drives up profits.

Given the above facts of how a disengaged workforce can burn a hole in the funds of organizations, it might be a good idea to find ways to adequately measure employee engagement and be able to correlate it with the business objectives of your organization. Unless you want to pay up your top dollars.

3. Culture

The culture of your organization can make or break your company. You need to know what the current people in your organization feel about their work and colleagues. You need to measure the components that define a company’s culture. The four main components of a company culture are individual behaviours, organizational behaviours, the business outcomes they produce and the drivers behind it.

Individual behaviours are the basis of engagement in the workplace. You will have to figure out a way to gain a deep insight into how employees feel every day, based on their work performance, or on their interactions with management and their colleagues. A good way to do this would be to take employee feedback on a regular basis and use this information to define what your company culture is. For example, if your company culture if flexible or rigid, do people feel valued or threatened, etc. It might also be a good idea to link business outcomes to your employment engagement strategy which will help you to adequately measure your ROI.

As per a study by Alex Edmans, PhD (MIT) and Professor of Finance at the London Business School for over a period of 27 years, a 3.8% increase was found in stock price for companies with happy, satisfied employees. Companies who registered profit growth had a 70.3% employee engagement score.

4. Employee advocacy

If any of your employee is asked about their feelings towards working with your company by an outsider, do you think their responses will be positive? If you are not sure, it might be a good idea to create such opportunities for employees within the organization so that they feel proud to be associated with your brand name. Only when employees are truly happy and engaged, they will genuinely promote your brand through social media and word of mouth.In this era of corporate transparency and the rise of social sites like Glassdoor, LinkedIn and Facebook and the like, the culture of your company can be known is not information restricted just to yourself or the management. Bad reviews can hamper the way people view your company and destroy your brand.

The wrap up

While most enterprises would focus on the outlay part of it, the outcomes also need to be thought of clearly.

Having an employee engagement strategy is not enough. Employee engagement should be carefully planned in a way that allows ROI. Your employee engagement strategy should focus on essential KPI’s such as retention rate, company culture and employee advocacy as discussed.While most enterprises would focus on the outlay part of it, the outcomes also need to be thought of clearly. What have you focused on?

Want to learn more about employee engagement? Learn about the Top 5 ways to ensure it.

About the Author

Bhaswati is a Product Specialist at Capabiliti, a mobile-first training and engagement solution for enterprises. Passionate about Economics, Bhaswati also loves storytelling. She has a keen interest in start-ups, food and travel. In her ‘me time’ she picks up fiction novels, tries different cuisines or explores routes to less traveled places on the world map. Follow her on Twitter at @Bhaswatibh

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Source: Outlay vs Outcome debate for employee engagement | The Qustn Cafe

Employee Onboarding – Engaging With New Talent in the First 90 Days

Your employees are your talent and your greatest assets. You need to make sure they are happy at every step! One of the most critical functions in this endeavor is employee onboarding. Employee onboarding does not end on day 1! In fact, real work towards onboarding an employee starts from here.

Getting your onboarding strategy right is extremely crucial. Taking care of the first day is important, but you also need to have a strategy laid out for the coming days. Shockingly, one of every 25 employees leaves on their very first day! And this trend is only getting worse with the rise of the millennials, since they are always open to new and better employment opportunities!

What are the steps that need to be taken in order to ensure that the new recruits make a successful transition to your organization?

Achieving this would require you to pay attention to how you are promoting your organization’s culture as well as how are you maintaining it to gain a competitive edge over similar players in the industry. The first 90 days are extremely important as they will decide whether you were able to create an active culture which gets the best out of your new hires or made the employees hate themselves for joining your organization because of your detached and poor onboarding techniques.

1. Start from Day 1

Your culture building process should start from day 1, where you find unique and exciting ways of making the employee feel special and warmly welcomed. A good idea for this could be to reduce the amount of paperwork which is generally a common formal procedure. Instead, make the first day full of interactions and devoid of any boring, mundane signature work. Instead, work on giving your employees an experience that they would want to share with their friends and family! This does not require you to plan extravagant sessions! Keep it simple and small. You can start with welcoming them with a gift box and ensuring that a team lunch is arranged so that they interact with their team mates.

2. Keep a constant check

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You cannot abandon your employees once they are hired. Do not leave them all by themselves to do their tasks. Keep a check on how they are doing and be their buddy in helping and supporting them at every step. Everyone likes a little extra attention in the beginning and doing this would make them feel a part of the company. Being a good mentor will not only help you get the best out of the new employees, but can also give your business tremendous payoffs in the years to come.

3. Train on essential skills

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Not all employees come to a new job with the required skills. In order to retain new hires, you will have to ensure that employees feel like they are growing in terms of the knowledge that they are gaining. Employers must educate new hires on how to best perform the tasks and responsibilities assigned to them. Assuming new employees know everything when they join could be one of the biggest mistakes you could make.

Onboard your new hires with Capabiliti’s Solution

4. Make an announcement

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It might get really awkward for a new joinee to come to work unannounced as all the existing staff might treat him like an alien. In such a scenario, the exchange between existing employees and the new hires might get awkward as no one was informed. To do away with this, make sure you make a loud announcement in the best way possible to the entire office about who is going to join them and as what so that additional confusion can be done away with. Send in a mail prior to their joining date so that everyone is informed well in advance and also keep the desks to be occupied clean and ready.

5. Set clear goals

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For the first 90 days, your strategy should be set. Define the route that new hires need to follow and what is it that is expected out of them in the first 90 days. Make sure you create a supportive environment which motivates the employees to achieve their best and give them whatever resources are required for them to do this successfully. If employees have a direction, they will feel like working towards achieving something and also see how well they fit in that professional set up. Their performance will also give you an indication of their skill sets and areas they need focus on.

6. Focus on real-time feedback

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Ignoring an employee just because he is just a few weeks old in the company might affect employee’s motivation levels adversely. Their performance would require close monitoring and their managers will have feedback at every point. Make sure that feedback reaches them constantly so that they can keep a note of it themselves and strive to do better. Avoid accumulating everything for the performance review at the end of six months. Such a prolonged interaction might demotivate your employees and deflate their confidence levels.

Tired of running around for feedback? Sign up free on Capabiliti by Qustn, create a feedback questionnaire in minutes, and shoot it out to everyone in your organization now!

7. Engage with interactive conversations

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Whenever there is any interaction, make sure there is a lot of questions and answers involved. You need to ask questions to new hires about their work and experience and also encourage them to ask you as many questions as they want. Be patient, kind and understanding while answering their queries and do not get bogged down by the level of support that might be on demand. Encourage an open environment where everybody’s voice could be heard.

8. Introduce key stakeholders

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For any new employee, it is important that they are told about who the important people are and how they are placed in the formal hierarchy. It is always a good idea when the employee knows who is in what role and why some people are so important. Also spend some time explaining the main people and their fun characteristics. Be as humble as you can and tell them about stories that have shaped the company.

You need to go out of your way to in the first 90 days and commit to make the employees feel welcomed and valued. Managers should ensure that new recruits are commended and applauded for their little achievements every now and then. Managers should also meet with their new employees at regular intervals to make sure they discuss their career goals and what methods need a different outlook.

The values and vision of their company should be reminded of as and when possible so that goals are in alignment to them. The manager employee relationship needs to be at a human level and should not be a chance to exercise tyranny. The culture needs to open where there is a scope for constant communication and exchange of ideas. New employees also need to have avenues for relaxation and fun filled days on working days as well.

Take a look at this infographic on employee onboarding strategies at Facebook, Google and Apple

About the Author

Bhaswati is a Product Specialist at Capabiliti, a mobile-first training and engagement solution for enterprises. Passionate about Economics, Bhaswati also loves storytelling. She has a keen interest in start-ups, food and travel. In her ‘me time’ she picks up fiction novels, tries different cuisines or explores routes to less traveled places on the world map. Follow her on Twitter at @Bhaswatibh

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Source: Employee Onboarding – Engaging With New Talent in the First 90 Days

10 Must Haves For A Successful Recruiting Strategy

What do you do when a top performer from the team resigns?

You will obviously start to frantically look for a replacement close enough to suit the same skill sets and experience within the notice period. But we all know how difficult that can get. Also, does that work every time? To pose another question, is that even the right way to deal with this problem? Mounting the problem up – this is a single employee situation. What should be done when you have a huge employee base and the number of important people leaving cannot be counted on your fingertips?

The answer to this would be to follow the most effective recruiting strategy. A strategy that helps you tackle the high churn rate in your industry, that helps you face challenges when the need to hire talent pops up every now and then. But how do you come down to creating a good recruiting strategy that works for your organization? Is there a set of simple tricks you can blindly follow?

The bad news is – there is no bible that recruiters can follow. The job market constantly keeps changing, and so do the needs of employees looking for a change. Hence the recruiting process depends on a variety of factors, each of which affects your practices to a great extent! So even if the job market might seem like facing a crunch at the moment, it would not mean that you can easily find the right talent fit for various openings. A lot of factors would need to be considered by you before you make your move.

Let us look at some of the most effective and successful recruiting tips that have been helpful to HR managers worldwide.

1. A well-thought out strategy

“51% of employees are either actively seeking or are open to a new job offer” – Jobvite

As already put out in the introduction, a company should always have a well laid out and thought through strategy which is aligned to the goals of the organization. Your strategy should be well communicated to your staff, which clearly defines your brand message and sets a list of priorities that will help you scoop out just the right candidates.

2. Work culture

“73% of recruiters said to compete against other employers, they highlight company culture” – Jobvite

You constantly need to tell prospective candidates about how great your work culture is and what sets you apart in terms of takeaways and culture. You need to excite candidates with a number of benefits. Talk about your culture and highlight the happiness quotient of your employees as much as you can. Best employees look for a conducive and comfortable work environment, and you need to ensure that you provide exactly that.

Having a good culture and successfully communicating this will definitely get you more employees through referrals as well. Do stories around your employees and sessions, and get it out on social media through blogs, videos and other exciting formats.

3. Competitor alert

There is obviously a lot of competition for being the best in terms of employer branding and recruiting, and whenever a company does manage to follow a successful strategy, their competitors are likely to quickly imitate that. Ensure that you keep yourself updated with what is happening around you and what is changing as the market keeps evolving. This also applies to potential candidates as they are constantly on high demand, and the best employees always need to be fought for.

4. Candidate targeting

In times of a need for mass recruitment, it is important to prioritize the top position up for grabs and target candidates who are currently working top performers and not looking for a change. Such employees bring out the best and you need to find ways that can help you convince them that the opportunities they can get at your company could meet a lot of their professional and personal interests. Such candidates contribute to business in a bigger way than candidates who are currently looking for a change.

5. Sourcing candidates

This is one of the most effective ways of indirect recruiting. Employee referral programs have time and again proved to be the most effective source for attracting high performers.

According to Dr. John Sullivan, other effective but under used sources could be recruiting at promotional events and contests.

Also, the source method should be flexible enough to shift, depending on the type of candidate required for the position. Most recruiters make the mistake of using the exact same scoring scheme for every job.

6. Objective data

Recruiting should happen on the basis of objective data, rather than being driven by common practices or emotions. This will help you get more reliable and qualitative results which are not bound by any kind of biases. When you are recruiting on a large scale, it might be a good idea to rely on objective data that yields the most effective results, as opposed to emotion driven decisions.

7. Power to everyone

A company needs to give scope to each and every one in the company to become a recruiter. Your managers and employees are constantly in touch with outside talent and that is why you need to build a culture of recruiting by one and all.

Your employees are the biggest agents of your employer branding through their own social and personal contacts. And they would mostly refer people who they think are eligible for the positions available. For top employees who have helped you recruit your best talent within the organization, make sure you reward them and let everyone know of their efforts. This could act as a great motivation for the rest of the employees.

8. Interviews

Interviews are one of the most important processes which define if candidates want to join you or not. So once you select candidates for interviews, your hiring focus should shift to the interview process. In order to maximize the success in interviewing, employers must consider aspects like the setting of the interview, the kind of questions they ask and how the candidate is treated overall.

It is critical to take a moment and put yourself in the candidate’s shoes before you start firing questions at them. If the interview happens at the workplace, you need to check if the area is comfortable, private and free from distractions. Remember, you alone are not the only ones judging during the hiring process. You need to be able to build a relationship and trust with the candidates.

9. Prioritize job positions

An effective recruiting process always maximizes resource utilization by identifying and prioritizing on the positions which have the highest business impact. This generally consists of jobs which yield the maximum revenues, as well as the jobs in high margin and rapid growth business units. The recruiting process should also target top performers who are proud and passionate of what they do.

10. Remote workers

The global workforce is going mobile and prefers to work on the move. You cannot ignore the growing demands of a distributed workforce. They would want to work remotely and want to get certain benefits for that. The recruiting process for such candidates also needs to be well defined and set in a way that holds satisfactory for both parties. It is important that you come into a mutual consensus with these employees and convince them that their needs and grievances will always be catered to.

Needless to say, these tips are not universal and would vary with respect to your company, culture and the population you are targeting. Hence, you would need to keep re-evaluating and re-assessing the validity of these tips as the market keeps evolving.

The power of social media and technology will be huge on future recruitment. Get access to an exclusive whitepaper and explore what the future of recruitment looks like.

Bonus Video!

About the Author

Bhaswati is a Product Specialist at Capabiliti, a mobile-first training and engagement solution for enterprises. Passionate about Economics, Bhaswati also loves storytelling. She has a keen interest in start-ups, food and travel. In her ‘me time’ she picks up fiction novels, tries different cuisines or explores routes to less traveled places on the world map. Follow her on Twitter at @Bhaswatibh

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Source: 10 Must Haves For A Successful Recruiting Strategy

What Organizations Need to Understand About Their Millennial Workforce

Whiny, impatient, hard-to-please, disloyal – these are some of the adjectives associated with millennials at the workplace. This generation born between 1980 and 1996 has also been identified as job hoppers and the hardest to retain. Companies of all kinds are obsessed with understanding millennials better. The Global Human Capital Trends Report, 2016 also stated the rise of millennial workforce as a demographic upheaval, which is a major force of global change in the talent landscape.

The truth is – this particular lot of the population has more or less the same needs as their older generations. In fact, a study by IBM debunked most of the myths associated with millennials. It showed that they actually want the same things from their workplace like their older generations (except for a few differences in matters such as retirement plans!).

But why are they still hopping jobs? 21% of millennial workers had left their jobs in the last year to do something else. Gallup has found that millennials struggle to find good jobs that engage them. In fact, millennials are the generation with the highest rates of unemployment and underemployment in the US. The problem of engagement is even severe with only 29% of employed millennials being engaged at work.

The only explanation to this is that they are clearly not getting what they want. It’s not that the millennials have a completely different view of the world as compared to the older generations, or are asking for too much. With the digital wave setting in and technology being readily available to this generation, organizations need to understand what exactly is expected out of them.

This is extremely critical as the presence of millennials in the US is huge. They are going to make up 40% of the workforce by 2020 and 75% by 2025 (as per the U.S. Bureau of Statistics project). If such a major part of a generation is not engaged at work, the cost of it will also be huge! As per Gallup, millennial turnover costs the U.S, economy $30.5 billion annually. At the same time, 60% of millennials are open to new job opportunities – this basically means that for businesses, half of their millennial workforce doesn’t see a future with them.

As per Gallup, the following things set millennials apart from other generations:

1. They really care about their job roles and view them as stepping stones and growth opportunities to their larger goals. 52% of millennials cite career progression as their first priority, followed by competitive salaries (PwC).
2. They are deeply committed to what they do professionally.
3. They do not want to work for bosses, but for coaches who invest and contribute to their personal and professional development.
4. They want more than free beers and a fun workplace as opposed to Baby Boomers and GenXers – they need to be convinced why and how an organization will help them learn, grow and develop and further their careers.
5. They want an emotional and behavioral connection with their jobs.
6. They want a high level of well-being – be able to spend on things that they want, rather on things they should have. Work life balance is key for them and they aren’t getting it. As per a PwC research 28% of millennial respondents said that their work life balance was worse than they expected before joining.

What Millennials Want from Performance Management

Performance management is a very critical area for most companies to crack as it defines the relationship between a manager and an employee. Millennials want coaches over bosses, and they can only stick to an organization that gives them managers who would potentially invest and contribute to their personal and professional growth. Like any relationship to succeed, communication is crucial here as well. Millennials are hungry for frequent and consistent communication and feedback from their managers. Level of manager involvement is directly proportional to the level of engagement that a millennial employee might have:

Lack of feedback – The reason for disengagement in this regard is also clear with statistics, as only 21% of millennials meet their managers on a weekly basis (Gallup). The exchange of feedback is low. Regular meetings, along with frequent feedback can lead to more engagement and better performance for teams as well as companies as a whole. Performance management needs to be a process spread over a year, rather than a year end discussion which focuses on assigning a number, which clearly is not holistic in nature.

Lack of flexible options – Along with feedback, millennials also wants flexibility at their workplace and move beyond the 9 to 5 cycle of drudgery. 77% of millennials say that flexible work hours are key to boosting productivity (Gallup). They love the idea of being able to work from any location with technology easily available – 39% of millennials believe that more options to work remotely would result in higher productivity.

Leadership and Millennials

89% of organizations cite leadership as one of their top challenges.

~ Global Human Capital Trends Report , 2016

Millennials bring high expectations to a workplace and they look for a recipe that gives them a rewarding, purposeful work experience, combined with constant learning and development opportunities that steers their career progression. Leaders and people managers are the most important stakeholders for driving engagement. HR managers should support leaders in creating an engaged environment at workplace. Leaders who motivate and coach their subordinates, who in turn motivate and engage theirs, are a key ingredient in creating a culture of engagement that sustains business results in a highly dynamic global environment. HR managers should demonstrate investment in helping leaders focus on building skills, empowering their colleagues as well as motivate individuals to ensure that they drive their own engagement.

In the Deloitte Millennial Survey 2016, 39 % of millennial respondents pointed to leadership as one of the most sought after aspects at the workplace. They also believe that businesses are not doing enough to bridge the gap and ensure that a new generation of business leaders is created. The survey also revealed that 71% of those millennials who are likely to leave their current company in the next two years are unhappy with how their leadership skills are being developed.

As per the Global Human Capital Trends report 2016, only 7% of surveyed respondents reported to have accelerated leadership programs for millennials. 28% of respondents reported weak or very weak leadership pipelines. And 21% of companies have no leadership programs at all! Many organizations are still finding it difficult to identify potential leaders and develop them, despite heavy investment being done to achieve the same.

On-the-job Training Opportunities

30% of executives see learning as the primary driver of employee development in the Global Human Capital Trends Report, 2016. Professional growth within the company is possible through learning and customized and blended training programs – which is something the young workforce is desperately looking for. Millennials have reported that they will move elsewhere if employers fail to provide learning opportunities to them. What needs to be done here is that employees need to be viewed as customers who long for satisfaction, rather than being treated as students who are pressurized into traditional classroom methodologies. This is the generation who loves exploiting the power of technology and mobile devices, and if learning programs are not aligned with these wants, they are most likely to leave that organization.

Millennials and other young employees have grown in a self-directed learning environment and have been exposed to the internet from an early stage. In fact, 85% of millennials access internet from their phones. They get most of the information they need from their mobile devices and 93% of millennials use social media to connect with their friends and family, as opposed to 84% in older generations. This is why they expect access to dynamic learning opportunities that fit their individual needs and schedules, as well as suit their talent and interests.

The digital wave has hit the world and the millennials want to take advantage of it. They want to be able to be on the move and work remotely. In fact, as per a study by PWC, 41% of miilennials prefer to communicate electronically at work than face to face or even over telephone.

What Organizations Need to Do

• Help millennials grow: Only 28 percent of millennials feel that their current organizations are making ‘full use’ of the skills they currently have to offer (Deloitte Millennial Survey, 2016).

Managers need to really understand the personal and professional goals of millennials. Understand the areas that interest these passionate people and offer them opportunities in the same.

• Mentoring: As per the Deloitte Millennial Survey, 2016, among those millennials who have somebody acting as a mentor, 83% are satisfied with this aspect of their working lives.

Millennials want and value frequent feedback unlike annual reviews that dominated in the past. They are more than willing to know how they are doing on a regular basis and expect real time feedback. Organizations need to make continuous feedback a major part of their engagement strategy.

• Encourage learning: Millennials are hungry for knowledge and they want to experience as much as training as possible. Organizations need to focus deeply on this aspect and build and measure the effectiveness of learning programs, along with mentoring programs. Technology plays a key role here as it allows L&D professionals to play with the way they want training to happen, and also retain the interest of this young lot by providing them with innovative learning options. A lot of technological innovations have come up that have helped organizations train their staff as well as measure the effectiveness of their programs. Capabiliti by Qustn is one such product that has helped L&D professionals connect learning with their business goals. See how.
• Focus on culture over profit: Millennials give more importance to people and culture over monetary aspects. Corporate values that are shared with and believed by millennials also promote loyalty—particularly when employers demonstrate a strong sense of company purpose beyond financial success. Those likely to remain longest share their organization’s values, and are more satisfied with its sense of purpose and support of professional development.
• Flexible options: Currently, millennials lack flexible options as 77% wish to have greater mobile connectivity, such as via tablets and smartphones (Deloitte Millennial Survey, 2016). Lack of remote working options is also serving as the greatest gap between current supply and demand surrounds the issue of remote working—fully 75 percent would like to start to, or more frequently, work from home or other locations where they feel more productive. If organizations work around providing such options to millennials, it will definitely increase their levels of satisfaction and boost productivity.

About the Author

Bhaswati is a Product Specialist at Capabiliti, a mobile-first training and engagement solution for enterprises. Passionate about Economics, Bhaswati also loves storytelling. She has a keen interest in start-ups, food and travel. In her ‘me time’ she picks up fiction novels, tries different cuisines or explores routes to less traveled places on the world map. Follow her on Twitter at @Bhaswatibh

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