There are lots of so-called facts about millennials out there but most of it isn’t applicable to real life — unless you’re running a website. What if you’re hiring the young as employees? What can you do to get them “up and running” as soon as possible? In the Onboarding Employees Checklist below, find 5 techniques that work.
1. Put all necessary, but boring, information on a DVD. Never lecture to new employees or allow their time to be “wasted.”
2. Get them working at the job by lunch time. Don’t ask for questions during orientation unless new hires have had a chance to road test the job. How can they have questions until they’ve tried to get the result.
3. Spend inordinate amounts of time explaining the results you want and showing examples of how real people achieved those results. Bring out your best employees to explain how they perform and any advice they might have. What would they have wanted to know on the first day on the job?
4. Provide lunch and assign seating so each group consists of at least two new hires and the rest old timers. Do not expect millennials to self-introduce. They are used to spending time with peers, not other age groups.
5. Schedule the next orientation meeting before you let new hires go to the job site. As a rule, nail it down, articulate expectations, leave nothing to chance.
Finally, the first six weeks are critical to each millennial’s decision to settle in or leave. Do not wait until a new hire complains about something. Ask how each is doing and fix anything that doesn’t work. Since these people have been trained never to give honest feedback in an exit interview, only the individual’s manager is likely to get useful feedback. Do not expect great enthusiasm initially. These are cautious people who thaw slowly.