Recruitment Opinion South Africa

How to retain young talent

Recruitment is an expensive necessity for any growing business, made even more costly when newly-skilled team members only stick around for short periods of time.
Wynand Smit
Wynand Smit

Twenty-somethings are notoriously hard to retain as employees. They can become disengaged and disaffected, waiting for their next performance bonus so that they can quit and do something – anything – else. It takes engaged management to ensure that skills (and personal) development takes place.

The “you can be anything you want to” generation gets bored fast, especially when they end up working long hours in a repetitive environment without affirmation. Even graduates with extensive academic training may not be up-to-speed with training when it comes to the rate that tech advancements are made, resulting in them feeling inadequate and frustrated at not being able to perform.

Angry or bored team members who come into contact with customers can damage the reputation of a brand.

In order to keep these promising team members going, it’s necessary to reach them in the language they understand – digitally.

Companies are coming to understand the value of solutions such as e-learning and gamification for aiding employees in gaining skills and being engaged.

E-learning has benefits such as:

    • On-site training, saving on travel costs and time

    • In-house monitoring, measurement and motivation
    • Direct value to the company

    • Turning idle or off-peak time into opportunities to learn, and upskill

If e-learning can be done in-house, it’s in an operational environment that adds context to the theory. It can have almost immediate benefits to the company in increasing efficiency and productivity and the team member’s progress can be monitored.

How to retain young talent

Gamification has similar, but not identical benefits. Gamification appeals to millennials, the growing workforce segment of younger people as it speaks to the console gaming generation. Gaming principles are used to provide motivation and skills development, complete with rewards-based activities, also from an existing desktop environment.

For example, team members can compete for virtual badges for achievements such as task completion, product knowledge, sales conversion and most-calls completed (in a contact centre environment).

Most importantly, younger employees benefit from engagement with managers. Rather than just throwing on-site training at them, they need ongoing input when it comes to placing those skills in context. They’re happily motivated with small (but real) incentives.

On-site training in the form of e-learning is a tool that engaged managers are using to motivate teams, and it appeals to this generation of workers.

The structure of the business should provide opportunities for advancement so that as team members acquire skills they are able to progress to more senior positions, in order to keep this cycle of training and empowering teams continuing.

About Wynand Smit

Wynand Smit is CEO at INOVO, a leading contact centre solutions provider.
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