Training the Millennial generation

The value of hiring Millennials in any industry today is well known.

Not only does this tech-savvy, creative and independent generation offer different skills and working styles that add value to the organisation, their willingness to learn and contribute to company growth makes them a key assets of today’s workforce.

However, it is important not to assume such skills imply Millennials don’t have as much to learn from others in the workplace. In fact, organisations should focus on leveraging their strengths in addition to helping them better their weaknesses.

“As people grow in their careers, the challenges they face are rarely around the core job,” says Dr. Nitin More, head of learning and development, APAC, Facebook. “They are mostly around what are generally called ‘soft’ skills that hit you ‘hard’ if you don’t work at them.”

But it is precisely in getting Millennials to develop these soft skills that has become a chore for HR practitioners.

“There’s a perception in the L&D community that Millennials have come to despise training provided on soft skills. It may be because of the quality or modality of training and the learning and development (L&D) function needs to own the responsibility of figuring out how to make them more effective,” More observes.

One of the reasons for the stigma is the fact that it doesn’t provide direct and immediate impact on day to day business goals for Millennials.

“In the initial phase of your professional journey, you’d always want to focus on business acumen more than skills like communication, influencing, team work, leadership. The trade off you are making is delaying investing in skills that take a longer period to get to an effective level."

However, it remains important for companies to get rid of such reluctance towards soft skill training if they wish for develop the younger workforce more effectively.

Showing how both hard and soft skills contribute to their development is a key step in getting the Millennial generation to embrace corporate learning as a whole.

Join Employee Effectiveness 2014 to hear More expand on the topic of cultivating Millennial friendly training programmes.

Additionally, hear from these forward-thinking speakers from companies such as AIG, Citibank, Dentsu, Pitney Bowes, Samsung and many more, who will explore the latest and most powerful trends of corporate learning.

Employee Effectiveness 2014 will be held on the 18^th and 19^th of June.

For more information on the event, or to enquire about attending, speaking or sponsoring, please visit www.ee2014.com