Help Millennials Get Onboard With These Tips

Onboarding is one of those components of training that really has a lasting impact in terms of retention and overall employee engagement.

Onboarding no longer simply means you hand employees a training packet and perhaps invite them to a new hire orientation. Employers are going above and beyond to onboard employees in a meaningful way, and that really holds true when it comes to Millennials.

Millennials are considered the most sought-after talent pools right now because they bring a unique perspective, a high level of education and technological know-how—but they also have a unique set of expectations when compared to generational employees from before them, and one of those areas of expectation deals with the onboarding process.

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If you want to have your Millennial employees be satisfied with their job and willing to stick around, consider these onboarding tips that will help you get off on the right foot with your new hires:

1. Get them excited: Millennials like to feel like they’re part of something exciting which is a big reason for the success of innovative companies like Zappos. Create this feeling of excitement as soon as you begin training and onboarding your Millennial new hires. Give them a first-hand look at the goals and objectives of the company, where the company is headed in the future and how it’s going to make a splash in the world. You want your new employees, Millennial and otherwise, to feel like they’re excited to work for you and the best way to start laying that groundwork is during onboarding and new hire training in general.
2. Byte-sized information: We’ve talked a lot about the impact brief or byte-sized learning can have in terms of the effectiveness of your training. No where does this hold more true than with Millennials. Develop training and onboarding that is concise, to the point, and gives your Millennial new hires information on a must-know basis.
3. Train on culture: Millennials often want to feel like they’re a good cultural fit for a company—that tends to be one of their primary points of interest, so let your new hires know exactly what your corporate culture is. New hire training and onboarding is a great place to comprehensively delve into your corporate culture and what it is that defines your company and your employees—don’t leave it up to your new employees to find out on their own. Show them through your training and eLearning what it’s like to be in your company on a day-to-day basis by including videos of your employees on the job, pictures of actual employees and quotes from people who work at your company. A company that we mentioned earlier—Zappos—does this on a large scale by creating a yearly culture book where employees write how they feel about their company’s culture and how that’s reinforced on a daily basis. You may not write a book on your culture, but it is important to present this information to employees during onboarding—particularly Millennials.
4. Define expectations: While the general consensus is that Millennials like a lot of flexibility in the workplace, they also tend to like to know what’s expected of them. Use the onboarding and new hire training process as a way to lay out expectations for employees in a way that’s very clear. The less ambiguity, the better and when Millennials feel like they really understand what they’re employers need and want from them, they’re more likely to flourish.

What’s interesting about looking at Millennials and the onboarding process is that these aren’t tips that just apply to this generation—these are things that almost every employee likely wants from onboarding, but Millennials just tend to be more vocal and outspoken about the factors that are going to help them be more successful within a company.

These are all onboarding tips that can be utilized in a general sense to help your employees become more engaged and more likely to be a long-term asset to your company.