Recently, we published A Comprehensive Guide to Understanding Millennials as Employees. For corporations interesting in hiring and retaining workers of this generation, this piece provided valuable insights and statistics on a range of issues:

1. Group size and diversity
2. Objectives and ambitions
3. Need for workplace/employer flexibility
4. Loyalty to employers/reasons
5. Business and leadership inclinations
6. Business values
7. Personal values and attitudes
8. Perspectives on technology

It’s a highly informative read and an excellent foundation for understanding what is, in many ways, a divergent generation. Consider reading that piece before coming back to this post, where you will find more concrete strategies for directly addressing Millennial engagement and retention.

Why is employee attrition among Millennials a problem?

In both formal and informal discussions that we have with DFW employers, we often hear that companies are increasing their investments in employee engagement and are targeting their younger workers for many of these investments. Yet many are not seeing definitive returns. Attrition is still high, and growing in many cases. It’s an employee’s market right now, which drives worker movement.

Solving for this attrition is HR’s responsibility

According to the 2016 Deloitte Millennial Survey: Winning over the next generation of leaders, this generation now represents the largest share of the U.S. labor market. Millennials are no longer the leaders of tomorrow, but are now increasingly occupying senior management-level positions. Human resources’ concerns with driving up overall employee engagement and retention must now focus heavily on what matters to Millennials.

Millennials aren’t going anywhere; they’re going everywhere

During the next year, if given the choice, one in four Millennials would quit his or her current employer to join a new organization or to do something different. They appear to be less loyal than their predecessors, but loyalty has decreased in every generation, so this may be part of an even larger trend.

• 2 in 3 Millennials expect to leave their employers by 2020.
• 44 percent expect to leave in less than two years.

Even Millennials in senior management positions intend to leave their employers soon, and 57 percent of these respondents say they will leave their employers before year-end 2020.

What’s important to understand about this (or any) generation, is what drives their desire to stay. According to The Center for Generational Kinetics Unlocking Millennial Talent 2015, these are the top five drivers of Millennial employee engagement:

1. I feel I am valued in this organization.
2. I have confidence in the leadership of this organization.
3. I like the type of work that I do.
4. Most days, I feel I have made progress at work.
5. This organization treats me like a person, not a number.

To make these engagement and retention drivers more actionable, we suggest closing three “gaps” that are common in many workplaces, according to a variety of reports on the subject of Millennials in the workforce.

The Leadership Gap

The Deloitte survey concludes that “Millennials believe businesses are not doing enough to bridge the gap to ensure a new generation of business leaders is created.” Most loyal employees are likely to agree that “there is a lot of support/training available to those wishing to take on leadership roles; and younger employees are actively encouraged to aim for leadership roles.” The converse is true for the least loyal employees. The statistics show a clear need for leadership training and a transparent path to positions of greater authority.

Millennials pointed to leadership in a survey as the most prized employee attribute (39%), but only 24 percent thought this was a strong trait of theirs after graduation (a gap of 15 percentage points).

• 63 percent say their “leadership skills are not being fully developed.”
• Only 28 percent say their current organizations are making “full use” of the skills they offer.
• 71 percent of those likely to leave in the next two years are unhappy with how their leadership skills are being developed—17 percentage points higher than those who intend to stay beyond 2020.
• 50 percent of male and 48 percent of female respondents say they are “being overlooked for potential leadership positions.”

The Ethical “Sustainability” Gap

According to the Deloitte study, “Millennials judge the performance of a business on what it does and how it treats people.” Performance should be about purpose and impact rather than healthy balance sheets. They want their employers to contribute to society, while also reflecting their own personal values. These principles are what many Millennials think about as the foundation of long-term sustainability. The report concludes that “those likely to remain longest share their organization’s values, and are more satisfied with its sense of purpose and support of professional development.”

Millennials consider businesses to be underperforming by 10 percentage points at improving livelihoods and underperforming by 12 percentage points on social/environmental benefits. Conversely, businesses are concentrating too much on profit generation (+10) and wealth creation (+13).

• 70 percent believe their personal values are shared by their organizations.
• 80 percent of senior Millennials believe their personal values are shared by their organizations.
• 82 percent of those intending to stay for five years believe their personal values are shared.

The Center for Generational Kinetics Unlocking Millennial Talent 2015 reveals that 60 percent of Millennials said a sense of purpose is part of the reason they chose to work with their current employer. They want to feel utilized and valued and know that the contributions they make to the organization each day matter.

Among respondents, 87 percent believe “the success of a business should be measured in terms of more than just its financial performance,” and 73 percent believe that business (in general) has a positive impact on the wider society. There are five key areas in which Millennials believe businesses’ sense of purpose should be far greater than is currently the case:

1. Providing a good income to employees.
2. Being the best possible place to work.
3. Improving the skills of our workforce.
4. Providing services/goods that make a positive difference to people’s lives.
5. Generating and supporting jobs.

The root of Millennials’ dissatisfaction with employers stems in part from a belief that businesses need to step up their ethics:

• 64 percent say businesses focus on their own agenda rather than considering the wider society.
• 54 percent say businesses have no ambition beyond making money.
• 49 percent have “chosen not to undertake a task at work because it went against their personal values or ethics,” a figure that increases to 61 percent among those in senior positions.
• 56 percent say they have “ruled out ever working for a particular organization because of its values or standard of conduct.”

The Experience Gap

Millennials value leadership and professional development, and for these reasons have shown a strong interest in the access to experience and expertise they receive in mentoring programs:

• 61 percent of Millennials surveyed are currently benefitting from having somebody to turn to for advice, or who helps to develop their leadership skills.
• Among those who have somebody acting as their mentor, more than nine in ten describe the quality of advice (94%) and the level of interest shown in their development (91%) as “good.”
• Among those with mentors, 83 percent are satisfied with the benefits of mentorship.

These figures show that a majority of employers now believe in the importance of mentorship in promoting engagement and retention of employees, especially for Millennials. They also demonstrate to employers who have not yet made mentorship program investments, that such efforts could also provide a strong impact on recruitment.

At Imprimis Group, we strongly encourage all DFW companies to invest heavily in closing the leadership, sustainability, and experience gaps—even if these gaps are narrow. They represent some of the most cost-effective approaches to being a great place to work for Millennials, and for everyone else.