Education and training can help make sure Millennials not only like their jobs but plan to keep working at them. By Lisa Hochgraf
As you look around your credit union office, are your Millennial-aged employees looking pretty happy? If they are, you probably should give yourself a pat on the back. But a Harvard Business Review survey suggests you might want to look deeper. It found that 69 percent of Gen Y professionals working in Fortune 500 companies reported being satisfied at work. At the same time, 48 percent said they planned to stay at their current job two years or less. One of the reasons, according to another Harvard Business School report, "Danger in the Middle: Why Middle Managers Aren't Prepared to Lead," is that many of these "satisfied" but "planning to leave" staffers are in middle management--a place where more training is needed if staff are to do two key things: a) find success in executing strategy and b) transform from "order givers" to leaders. Amy Fox, CEO and founder of Accelerated Business Results, Cincinnati, offers three insights for better training these members of your team: 1. Teach "how" as well as "what" and "why." Middle managers need to understand the day-to-day requirements of their jobs and how that links with the leadership skills they are taught. There are many ways to approach this, but it is critical to have a formal component that gets them working with their real material, Fox asserts. (The between-segments projects for the three-year CEO Institute program does just that.) 2. Build ongoing training with multiple entry points. Rather than the traditional event-driven approach, companies are finding that training is much more effective if it happens over time in multiple layers, Fox says. For example, the CUES Next Top Credit Union Exec challenge begins virtually, with participants posting blogs about their credit union projects, then brings the finalists together to give their final presentations live at CEO/Executive Team Network in November. 3. Keep leadership training relevant. This is as important for the company with one or five managers as it is for those in the Fortune 500, Fox says. Good training for middle managers is not a once over; it will require frequent updating, emphasizes Fox. So this means looking for new and varied opportunities each year can make a difference. (CUES is offering a special Webinar at 1 p.m. central Tuesday, June 2, "CUES 101 for NextGen Leaders," which will describe how membership connects young leaders to the knowledge base of longtime CEOs--besides offering many other benefits.) Lisa Hochgraf is a CUES senior editor. Your Gen Y staff might like to know about CUES Elite Access, which delivers valuable learning to their desktops leveraging Cornell University's remote learning platform and world-class faculty. Attend--or send someone from your team to--"CUES 101 for NextGen Leaders" on June 2 at 1 p.m. Central. Nominate an under-35 professional from your team to participate in the CUES Next Top Credit Union Exec challenge by this Friday, June 5.
