The 3 Rs of Managing Millennial Employees

The subject for this essay is an article by Donald Hillman titled, The 3 R’s of Managing Millennial Employees – Recruit, Relate, Retain. Mr. Hillman is a management consultant by trade and has experience consulting in governmental, not for profit and distribution industries. In this article, Mr. Hillman implies that managing millennial employees is typically ineffective because of limited or poor research conducted on what motivates the younger generations of employees. This ignorance by many managers results in conflict and dissent by the millennial generation and ultimately leads to issues with employee retention (Hillman).

While the author seems to be attempting to give insight on the subject of millennial employees in the workplace, he does so in a manner that is somewhat ambiguous to the reader. The underlying question that is presented by the author revolves around employee satisfaction and retention. The author attempts to address how leadership in an organization should relate to the younger generation of employees, how to recruit those employees into the organization and finally, once employed, what steps the organization should to take in order to keep those employees engaged and satisfied with the business so they can be retained and continue to grow within that group (Hillman).

Mr. Hillman states that he himself has conducted three years of research on this subject and that his results have been peer reviewed for authenticity. He conducted this research because managers and human resource professionals often rely upon this type of research to define generally accepted values and culture of a defined generation for staffing strategies. What Mr. Hillman fails to provide is any specific data sets or documentation...

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... that it provides an insight into the values that the younger generation of employees identify. The information should be taken into account during recruitment and project based positions and used intelligently where the situation allows.

Mr. Hillman feels that there is a specific way the millennial generation views the world; in that assessment he is correct. Organizations need to be mindful of the differences between generations and respectful of the values of each. More specific research will prove insightful if more variables are introduced and investigated. Such variables might include education levels, demographics, type of industry or position and even further breakdown of age groups.

Work Cited

Hillman, Donald R. "The 3 Rs of Managing Millennial Employees – Recruit, Relate, Retain." HR Professionals Magazine. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 May 2014.