Employee retention and engagement is one of the main concerns of companies nowadays, and taking into account that the future of our workforce are millennials, Dale Carnegie decided to learn more from this generation of young professionals in order to understand their motivations and how to engage them. This study has shown the differences between millennials and baby boomers in terms of motivation at work.

According to the study, millennials, this is, those born between the early 1980s and the early 2000s, feel less appreciated, less confident and not as related to their jobs comparing with their coworkers of the X Generation. It also showed that the motivations of millennials are different from older colleagues.

The study showed that millennials really appreciate some things that they are currently missing in their jobs such as, having a fluent and sincere communication with their supervisors and bosses, having supervisors that can be an example of professionalism for them, doing interesting and diverse tasks in their jobs, as well as being able to learn new things and develop as professionals in order to promote.

They also give great importance to some emotional factors. Millennials value some things that they are currently missing in their jobs such as trusting the leading capabilities of their direct supervisors, having empathetic supervisors that care about their personal life and the possible effects it can cause on their performance and being able to have enough involvement in any decision that can affect their job.

In terms of other functional attributes, the research showed that this generation of young professionals appreciate work flexibility way more than the previous generations. On the other hand, one of the things that millennials do appreciate and which do actually find in their current jobs is receiving help from others when they need it.

The study also shows that this new generation is not feeling as proud of the contribution their companies do to the community as the employees of the previous generation are. And the also feel lees motivated to go to work as baby boomers. In what both generations agree is that they need to improve communication, the need mores sincere bosses, they need supervisors that worry more about their personal life and that the need to receive more recognition when they do a great job. Both generations also agree that communication, benefits and incentives and compensation are important factors for employee engagement.

So, to conclude, make sure that you take all these things into account when working towards millennial employee motivation, engagement and retention, as they are the present, but specially, the future of our organizations.