Recruiting & Retaining A Millennial Workforce

By 2020 it is projected that 46% of the US workforce will be comprised of millennial workers. As millennials begin to take over the workforce it is time to start thinking differently about how your business attracts and retains talent.

To make things even more complicated, competition for the best employees is at an all-time high in the service and hospitality industry. According to the National Restaurant Association, it is projected that over 300,000 new jobs will be added to the industry in 2016. This means that your employees are being called on by other restaurant owners to go work for them. The question you should be asking yourself is, will they take the call? They just might…and you should be worried about it.

Millennials Think Differently About Work

When one of your employees quits, how often is your first thought, “I wish that I could pay them more money…if I could pay them more then they would have stayed”. In the past, this may have been the right way to approach the issue of people quitting, but it is important to understand that Millenials think differently about work than GenX. They care more about their time and experiences and less about money. “Although their ideal job would pay a lot of money, when push comes to shove, nearly 60% of those surveyed would choose a job they love, even if it comes at a lower pay grade,” according to the report by poll director Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, the Clark psychology professor who coined the term “emerging adults.”

It Is Time To Start Making Your Employees Love Their Job

As the millennial workforce takes over, there are endless things that you can do as an employer to make your employees love their job. We think the most important thing you can do is provide opportunities for career growth within your four walls. In the service and hospitality industry, career growth bottlenecking is all too common. In order to move up in the industry, workers are often times left with going to work at another business as their only option. What if employees didn’t feel that they needed to leave to develop themselves professionally or to move up in their careers?

Here are a few things you can do today to help your employees develop professionally within your four walls.

• Review all positions in your business and map out career paths for each role.
• Share the opportunities for career growth with your team once they are clearly defined
• Set up monthly meetings with your employees to discuss how they are doing according to the career growth plan you have mutually agreed on.
• Don’t wait for your employees to ask for promotions or new responsibilities. It is important to identify top talent early, recognize them, and mentor them in their careers. If you don’t someone else will.

Now that we have taken a look at retaining employees in the changing workforce it is also important to think about attracting new employees. You may have the best company culture and employee experience in the world, but how are you marketing that to prospective millennial employees?

The days of posting an ad on craigslist and not even listing the name of your company because you don’t want job seekers to bother you during the day are soon to be over. Job seekers want to know who they are working for, who they are working with, and get a taste of what it will be like to work at your business. That is where we come in. Our team at Industry has built our platform to help you attract top millennial talent to your business.

How Industry Helps Businesses Recruit Millennial Talent:

Transparency: On Industry your company can clearly list the name of your company, location, logo, social media accounts, and more. While these may seem basic, it is more important than ever to showcase exactly who you are to job seekers

Video Content: Industry profiles enable you to display a video on your company page. This is an opportunity to introduce yourself, the team, and clearly lay out what it is like to work for you. You can also feature a video that simply showcases your venue just as you would use it to showcase to customers. This gives job seekers the understanding of what is like to actually work at your business.

Photos: They say a photo is worth a thousand words. On an Industry business profile, you can give job seekers a better idea of what the actual working conditions are like. For example, showcasing what it looks like behind the bar, in the kitchen, or around your offices. Millenials want to work somewhere that has nothing to hide. If you can’t showcase where they will be working, why should they ever come work there?

Job Postings: All of your job postings on Industry are listed right on your profile. The photos and videos from your profile are also displayed right on your job postings to re-emphasize who you are and what it is going to be like to work for you.

It is time to change the way you think about recruiting and retaining employees. We look forward to hearing stories of how you provided new opportunities to your employees and are excited to partner with the service and hospitality industry to help everyone attract and retain amazing employees.

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