Corporations, desperate for skilled labor, are searching all over the world for anyone who can think outside the box. The problem is, all of the ping pong tables, free lunches, and incentives in the world may attract the top talent, but it doesn’t make them stay. What’s the point of hiring innovative people if you put them into an environment that kills creativity? The only thing that keeps skilled millennials around is a culture built on transparency, mentorship and trust.
The largest growing new workforce, made up largely of Millennials as Boomers age out, insists on a quid pro quo relationship with their employers, something pretty much unheard of until now. Millennials want the companies they work for to invest as much time and energy into them as they invest in the company.
We’ve written about the kinds of benefits that attract and retain Millennial workers: education, flexible work hours, volunteer opportunities and mentorship. How much time a company is willing to spend on its employees is directly correlated to how long they stay with the company.
Corporations are Desperate for Millennials
We all learned from Econ 101 that when demand is high and supply is short the cost of the goods goes up. Price Waterhouse Cooper (PwC) releases an Annual CEO Survey Report, which surveys leaders from the top Fortune 500 companies around the world. The PwC report found that “77% of CEOs are concerned that key skills shortages could impair their company’s growth…Creative, innovative leaders with emotional intelligence are in very short supply.” A look at Figure 9 below shows that the most important skill that top corporations are looking for is “Problem Solving.” The hardest ones to find are “Creativity and Innovation.”