Are you struggling to retain the young talent your company needs to support future growth? This is a problem in almost every industry today.

Mike Erwin, CEO of Tailored Label Products (TLP), faced this problem squarely in trying to grow his digital printing business outside of Milwaukee. Here are five things TLP has done to increase the retention of its millennial workforce. How is your organization doing in these areas?

Create a Mentoring Culture

Mentoring is a central part of TLP’s culture. Each new worker, whether they’re in a customer care, accounting or production job, is given a “buddy” to shadow with a written and documented initial orientation plan to teach them more quickly about important issues, beyond what’s covered in traditional safety and benefits training.

Creating a culture where effective mentoring is taken for granted is not easy. Culture change always starts at the top. Your leadership team must be modeling the behavior you expect of younger employees.  To clarify this, start by asking: “What would an ideally effective mentoring culture look like? What would we see happening?”

Build an Appreciative Culture

To appeal to a generation that may have grown up getting a trophy just for showing up, TLP frequently recognizes and rewards achievement.

Every six months all employees are given five large decals the look like poker chips with their name printed on them. Workers use the decals to nominate other employees and write what they have done, out of the norm, to help customers, colleagues, or the community. These tokens go in a jar and there are regular drawings for prizes that include gift cards on up to an iPad mini.

Management also periodically tallies up the tokens to identify which employees are ranked by their colleagues as contributing the most to others. CEO Mike Erwin says:

“We want to culturally instill that people will always be recognized for a job well done. So leadership keeps a stack of $50 and $100 gift cards handy just to spring on employees quietly when they’re doing something outside their job or pushing to meet a customer deadline. It’s recognition in a consistent and uninterrupted way instead of having a plaque at the annual Christmas dinner. It’s a more meaningful way of saying, ‘You’re knocking it out of the park.’”

Promote Social Action

TLP recognizes young employees want to see that their leaders are committed to community involvement. So management often encourages teams of employees to use their skills in areas such as graphic design and the ability to create in-kind products and services to support local philanthropy projects, such as hospital fundraisers and charity races.

TLP also encourages employees to organize teams that the company will sponsor in fun events, such as a local Mud Run. “We’ve tried to build an environment where employees feel free to ask if we’ll sponsor their participation in an event like this,” says Erwin. “We almost always say ‘yes.’”

“Touching the Lives of People” (A program using the letters of the TLP company logo) is a process that empowers all employees to take action and show the company cares for others in its community, as well as for clients and suppliers. If an employee learns that a customer has a parent in the hospital, they’re empowered to send flowers or make a gesture of caring.

Promote a Culture of Fun!

People are more likely to want to work in an organization they enjoy, so TLP’s leaders promote fun through frequent non-work social events, such as a non-alcoholic Margarita Day, which is really a late afternoon mixer. Or the event might be an ice cream social where employees provide treats and team-spirited games as a midday break. They’ve also done a Winter Hot Chocolate Day where the president runs through the operation serving all employees. And after hitting an important performance milestone, TLP’s leaders provided a “thanks for going the extra mile” candy bags.

They also consciously “gamify” the workplace to include frequent employee contests and ranking boards, such as how people are doing with their Fitbit monitored exercise programs.

Seek New Insights on What Motivates Millennials

Building a millennial-friendly culture is an ongoing process. So TLP’s leaders continually try to learn from young workers inside the company what they could do better. Through internal employee surveys and when working with young people on community outreach programs, managers will ask questions and listen carefully for ways TLP can make the work environment more aligned with the needs and wants of millennials.

For example, it was through a “Best Place to Work” survey conducted by a third party that management discovered employees wanted leaders to communicate more information on what drives the company’s profit sharing plan. They also were interested in more flexible work arrangements in certain parts of the business. TLP’s CEO says:

“We’re biased in that we pay more attention to feedback from millennials. For example, they have a bias toward supporting non-profits who work with struggling young moms, as opposed to supporting older felons reentering the workplace. Our staff wants to support agencies that are more aligned with who we are as a team, and management listens to that.”

Benefits of Retaining Millennials

When TLP began courting young workers on the eve of the Great Recession, they were only 10% of the company’s workforce. Today millennials account for more than 50% of the firm, whose revenues have grown 400%.

Other benefits of creating an organization that effectively retains high-performing younger workers include:

• Turnover is less than five percent at TLP.
• More agile workplace with employees anxious to step up and try new innovations.
• More attractive to customers, who like doing business with a positive, high-energy, diverse organization.

 Contact me for a more detailed case study about TLP’s efforts at building a millennial-friendly culture.