How to train millennials
Author — Swati Kamath| Product Marketing Manager
Millennials. This single word has had organizations flummoxed for over a decade — Who are they? What do they want? How to manage them? How to train them? There is significant research available on the largest generational cohort in the current global workforce. Despite being part of the global workforce for over 15 years, and proactively voicing their needs, desires, demands and interests, organizations still struggle to interact, train and engage with them.
Some well-established facts about millennials are as follows:
- Millennials are the most educated generation ever — they have the exposure ad know the “basics”; where they struggle is in implementing their learning
- Paradoxically, millennials form the largest part of the unemployed section — Despite being better educated than their predecessors, most millennials feel that their graduate degrees afford them no greater benefits than their high school diplomas
- Millennials are reporting the highest levels of clinical anxiety, stress, and depression than any other generation at the same age — Some of the top contributors to millennials’ anxiety include a tough job market, student debt, ambition addiction / career crises, as well as unprecedented challenges involving a constantly changing political and economic climate and demanding technology-based lifestyles.
Why is this important to organizations, specifically L&D teams?
It is because adapting learning strategy for the millennial workforce is a key L&D priority; and the aforementioned facts largely dictate all millennial behaviors, including that of learning and development. The reality of their situation can make millennials feel highly disillusioned and hopeless, leading to lower productivity and higher attrition. To overcome these challenges, it is important that L&D teams effective cater to the millennials’ need for learning that is hyper-personalized, on-demand, engaging, quick, impactful and a part of their job.
While organizations have gathered some success when it comes to making learning on-demand through mobile-based and eLearning, there is still a long way to go in truly catering to millennial demands for learning. Biology teaches us that making learning fun can help L&D teams manage these challenges and cater to these needs.
The dopamine invasion
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter; Released by brain cells, dopamine is involved in many pathways in the brain, playing an important role in a range of body systems as well as functions, including movement, sleep, learning, mood, memory and attention. It is reputed as being the “feel-good hormone”. Dopamine is associated with feelings of euphoria, bliss, motivation and concentration, all of which we feel when we are having fun.
When learners are having fun, they feel good, which results in them letting go of their inhibitions and become more receptive to the environment around themselves. As a result, the learning update is higher.
So, how do we ensure that learners are having fun?
Get your GAME on
According to Malcolm Gladwell, author of “Outliers”, individuals need 10,000 hours of practice before mastering anything. Millennials, or anyone living in this time and age, do not have the luxury of time to master skills.
Gestalt Psychology teaches us that it is easier to learn, understand, retain and apply something new when we relate it to something we already know how to do. For millennials, this can be done through ‘gaming’. Why? Globally renowned game designer Jane McGonigal estimates that by the age of 21, the average millennial has already spent 10,000 hours gaming.
Combining what we have learned from Gladwell and Gestalt Psychology, we can infer that millennials, in general, are receptive to game-based learning. There are many things that can be taught through games. For skills that cannot be taught in such a manner, we employ the style of gamification-based learning, which refers to using game-based elements such as leaderboards and point systems in non-game-based scenarios.
Gamification has become commonplace with the platform revolution. Any activity or service that is on a platform has become gamified in one form or the other. According to TechForge, a good gamification platform comprises three attributes:
- Data Insight: Analytics about user behavior patterns
- Clear Objective: Highlights a problem that the organization is facing, and allows the learner to solve this problem real-time
- Growth: Allows the used to recognize performance in the game
Most importantly, gamifying learning allows learners to:
- be immersed in the experience
- see real-world application
- engage in collaborative and social learning
- make mistakes in a safe learning environment
