Recently, I caught up with some human resources people at a luncheon and fell into an interesting discussion. One HR practitioner I met was from an entertainment and recreational organisation, where millennials formed much of the workforce. She observed that the majority of the millennials lack certain fundamental traits, such as punctuality, and often take sick leave, especially after a long holiday or weekends.

She told us how her organisation bent over backwards to engage their millennial workforce. Some changes they have introduced include flexible pay structures and working hours and various incentive programmes to recognise performance, impact and innovation.

Another HR person from a professional firm then countered with some strong philosophical remarks.

She mentioned that there will always be generation subcultures. However, the fundamental traits – a commitment to quality and customer satisfaction, a sense of responsibility, drive, perseverance and sheer hard work – required to succeed in professions such as accounting, medicine or law would never change. She observed that though her organisation hired over 1,000 millennial trainees in Greater China annually, over 80 per cent of them would resign within 18-24 months for various reasons. Although it was a painful process given the cost and energy invested in each recruitment campaign, neither she nor her organisation would consider lowering the intake standards or compromising on the performance criteria for the sake of a better retention ratio.

In my opinion, both practitioners are right in their own way as there is no hard and fast rule for squaring this circle.

However, I would advise the second lady to learn from the first and have a strategy for millennial engagement as an 80 per cent turnover rate is just too high and costly. I would strongly recommend both re-examine their assessment tools and processes to ascertain the “best-fit” candidate in terms of cultural suitability, career drivers and personality traits.

This article appeared in the Classified Post print edition as Millennial bugs.

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Millennials present new challenges in the workplace but that needn’t be a problem

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