6 ways to keep your most talented millennial employees

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“We lost another talented millennial.”

It’s something I hear all too often from employers.

That’s because boomer managers aren’t quite ready for millennials to be heard.

They say that it’s all about the millennials having input, but they’re actually resistant to taking employees in their twenties and thirties seriously because they “haven’t paid their dues.”

The lesson here: Talk is cheap.

Companies can’t make empty promises to get millennials in the door then not deliver, because they’ll see right through it.

A flexible work schedule and creative break room is great (not many of us would shy away from a pool table and pedicure station), but millennials need to have their voices heard, and they need to hear voices from the top.

My son worked for a startup that used Slack team messaging app to manage projects. At age 18, he knew what the CEO was thinking because he was in the loop. It was real-time and everyone was connected. That kind of transparency and inclusion is what millennials need.

Companies can increase the probability of holding on to talented millennials by creating opportunities for them to:

Lead a meeting

Drop the mindset that an employee needs to put in a certain amount of time or tenure to take a leading role on a project or strategy. Millennials bring a lot to the table. Give them a chance to pitch a new idea and get feedback by letting them lead a meeting.

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Implement a creative idea

Empower millennials to not only share ideas, but educate others on possible ways to make them come to life. In my office of career services, for example, a millennial staff member suggested and set up screen share to review résumés online versus scheduling in-person meetings.

Work with a mentor

Providing mentors for millennials gives them access to fresh perspectives and objective feedback. Note: This is different from guidance they would receive from a manager because it’s an unbiased sounding board.

Millennial Laura Aiken, senior account executive at Travelers, says that mentor relationships don’t always need to be formally coordinated. “When I was an intern at Travelers, I spent coffee breaks with a successful underwriter who provided guidance that helped me to assess how my skills could fit into the field.”

See the rest of the story at Business Insider