10 Effective Ways to Keep Your Millennial and Gen Z Employees Productive

Millennials and Gen Z now make up much of the workforce. So, it is important to adapt your workplace strategies to get the most out of them.

Which is not to say you should discard everything you’re already doing and start again. Rather, it’s a case of looking at how these employees work, and figuring out how to make them as productive and efficient as possible.

For example, the idea of working 9 to 5 in a cubicle in a soulless office space is outdated and unappealing. A work environment should be stimulating. It should encourage productivity, and make people want to work there.

How to keep millennial and Gen Z employees productive

So, how does one keep millennial and Gen Z employees productive? In this blog post we’re going to explore 10 ways that will help you get the most out of these employees.

1. Provide training

Workplaces that provide constant training tend to have happier, more productive staff. With onboarding processes, and access to training materials you can help your employees focus and improve on their strengths.

According to a study, roughly 50% of millennials admit they would leave a job if it didn’t provide learning opportunities.

We all want to grow. And as a business it’s in your best interest to cultivate your employees to be better. They better they are, the more productive they are, the more valuable they become to your business.

2. Task delegation

Delegating tasks to the right employees is vital. Matching specific tasks to specific skill sets ensures that employees will produce the best outcome. After all, we all tend to perform best at tasks we’re already good at.

By assigning tasks to the team member most suited to it, they will be able to perform the task faster and more efficiently. Also, they will see things, and come up with ideas, that someone less skilled wouldn’t think of.

By assigning tasks to the most qualified person, they get a sense of accomplishment and you get maximized efficiency.

Read more on how a work management software would be helpful for your team.

3. Transparency and feedback

Feedback is an important part of learning and growth for an employee. But it’s also important that employers are transparent about what they’re doing—as well as being transparent about mistakes they make.

By creating a culture of transparency, it means people aren’t afraid to make mistakes. No one likes to make them, but in a culture where it’s all about accountability and learning, staff are less likely to try and cover it up. Which only slows things down and causes more problems.

By having this culture, you are promoting learning and improvement. And this can only help improve productivity for everyone.

4. Set goals

There are two types of goals you should set. Stretch goals and smart goals.

Stretch goals aim high; they’re ambitious goals that are constantly growing. The idea behind this is it gives employees a constantly moving goal post that encourages continued growth and improvement.

Smart goals are the immediate results-driven goals. These are the goals linked to performance evaluation.

The idea between having separate goals is that if there are only performance evaluation goals there’s no incentive to aim high and grow. Employees become stuck in a rut of doing what’s necessary to tick a box. Which leads to either very slow growth, or worse no growth at all.

Providing two sets of goals keeps millennials and Gen Z employees motivated and ambitious which has been shown to help with productivity.

Read more on how to avoid burning out at work.

5. Maximize technology

Over 55% of Gen Z employees believe technology allows them to be more productive. In truth, the right technology makes most of us more productive.

With the range of software available, it has never been easier to leverage technology to maximize productivity and efficiencies.

With modern technology what can be automated should be automated. Allowing more time for people to do the creative things automation can’t do. This also means more time can be spent on work that will positively impact your company’s bottom line.

For example: collaborative task management software is a great way to keep everyone connected, on track, and apprised of a project’s overall progress.

This sort of technology encourages and aids with transparency, feedback, and communication. It also enables staff to work flexible hours, and even work remotely. Collaborative task management software is one of the most efficient ways to maximize technology in such a way as to get the most out of employees while keeping everyone accountable, and ensuring projects are completed to spec.

6. Forget labels

With millennials and Gen Z it’s easy to fall prey to stereotypes. But—as cliché as it sounds — we are all individuals. Not all millennials and Gen Z have the same attitude and approach to work, which is why it’s so important to get to know people as individuals first.

Find out what they’re working style is, how they best learn, and what they can do for the company. While all of this may sound counter-intuitive to the article as a whole, it’s really about everyone wanting to be treated as an individual rather than as a mindless worker bee drone.

Taking this approach will help millennial and Gen Z employees be more accepted in the workplace. And this can help them be more productive.

7. Establish trust

One of the advantages of fostering transparency and encouraging feedback is that it helps to build trust amongst employees. As well as between employers and employees.

Transparency provides a sense of involvement. No one likes feeling out of the loop.

Having open and honest communication increases alignment within your business, and helps to ensure everyone is working towards the same goal(s).

Establishing trust makes people feel more welcome, more involved, and more invested in the success of their work.

8. Sufficient resources

Millennials and Gen Z grew up in a digital age, and will judge prospective employers on what resources they provide employees.

To truly have an effective workforce you want to have the right equipment and tools. This includes everything from the most efficient data storage, to the right task management software, and the most efficient hardware.

If you have cloud storage, task management software, and hardware to efficiently run all of this, your staff can be more efficient and productive—which will benefit your business long term.

Find out about 10 keys benefits of using a work management software for remote teams.

9. Offer flexibility and remote options

This has been touched on briefly already. But let’s look at why flexible work hours and remote working options are both effective ways to keep employees productive.

Allowing remote work helps employees improve their work-life balance. Which can make for happier employees. And happy employees tend to be more productive than unhappy ones. There’s also the fact that happy employees tend to stay at a job longer than unhappy ones.

Keeping employees happy and engaged is one of the best ways to keep them. And keep them producing quality work consistently.

With the right technology—like task management software—it can easy to offer flexible work hours and remote working. Since with the right software all you need is a good internet connection and a laptop.

This allows employees to have better balance work and life, and gives employers more options when it comes to hiring.

10. Celebrate victories

Celebrating wins helps keep morale up. Celebrating victories is a great way of showing employees that there is a reason (beyond their paycheck) for why they do what they do. There’s nothing wrong with celebratory drinks on a Friday afternoon.

This helps boost morale, keep employees apprised of wins, and it shows that their employers actually care about the people doing the work.

All which fosters a desire to continue to be productive and produce the best results for the company.

Keeping millennial and Gen Z employees productive

The image of workplaces being more like a games room with desks rather than the stereotype cubicles has become something of a caricature.

This is not what most millennials and Gen Z employees want. They want to work somewhere that is rewarding—not just financially rewarding, either. They want a place that doesn’t trade their youth for a paycheck they can’t enjoy because they’re too busy working.

It’s all about work-life balance. It’s about treating people like people rather than like drones. In order to keep your millennial and Gen Z employees productive you want to make them feel engaged with their work, their colleagues, and the company as a whole.

Keep them engaged, provide training, support, quality resources, and flexible work hours and you’ll find they will be loyal and productive. You will get much more out of happy, engaged employees than you ever will out of employees who are solely there for the paycheck.

With these 10 effective ways you can keep your millennial and Gen Z employees being productive year after year.

If you would like to know more about how to keep your millennial and Gen Z employees engaged and productive no matter where they’re working from, sign up to Quire today. Our task management software will help improve productivity, accountability and communication.