Managing Young Employees with Employee Engagement

Managing Young Employees

If you picked a career path in retail, food service, or almost anything these days, there is a great chance that you have a few employees of a younger generation where strong employee engagement is necessary. A younger employee fills key hourly positions and takes the load of off many employee schedulers in various small business industries by providing flexible availability, a “want-to-work” attitude and an eagerness to earn extra money.

However, there are many obstacles small business owners face when hiring a young employee, mainly teenagers. Many younger employees come with transportation issues, poor attitudes and lack of knowledge or skill set. In addition, other younger employees are only motivated by the desire to buy things such as car accessories, recreation, clothing or pure entertainment, taking away from a small business owner’s ability to train, coach, mentor and develop an ideal employee for their workplace.

ScheduleBase wants to remind you of a few important items that may assist you in better preparing and managing employees of the younger generation. It should be your goal to learn how to communicate with them and learn to transition your business practices to include better employee engagement. After all, you may find yourself training and developing one of these younger employees into a permanent, full-time, benefited employee in the near future.

1. Engage with Creativity

Conduct a daily employee engagement experience by creating an ongoing list of proactive
items that you normally wouldn’t consider a part of your daily business routine. If you’re a restaurant, maybe you send out your younger employees with free samples for local area businesses, or if you’re a local moving company try canvassing a neighborhood with “free large pickup item” flyers on a specific slower day of your work week to spread the word about your business. An ongoing list of these types of items promotes employee engagement for the entire workplace!

2. Choose Old and New Daily Motivators

The success of managing employees to the point where you have an efficient work flow is a direct result of not only the manager’s efforts, but of the team a manager employs around him. To make sure employee engagement captures both your tenured employees and the so-called “newbie’s”, assign a daily motivator from both sectors and let them be the driving change and key influencers one day of the week when communicating and managing the rest of the team.

3. Don’t Be Afraid to Hold Younger Employees Accountable

Don’t be afraid to hold your younger employees accountable. It’s no secret that the relationship between a manager and a younger employee will no doubt impact results. Focus on the behavior change you may encounter with a younger employee and adapt to their needs, however, don’t lighten workloads, limit goals that are set, or take away from the fact that ALL employees need to pitch in to accomplish the end goal.

4. Always Offer Your Help and Expertise

Being a proactive manager and offering assistance to a younger employee sends a clear message that you are engaged and in control. A teenage employee often comes to your place of business looking to learn and wanting to take away something from each day. Providing an image of superiority, uniformity and involvement for all will be well-received and noticed immediately by the younger generation.

5. Be Authentic

Have you ever thought that being yourself is a key motivator to employees? A strong  manager is one who is himself in the workplace and doesn’t have to create an image to be effective. Younger employees will adapt better to an environment where it’s clear of what is expected of them and will be at ease with a culture where they can be themselves at work and share stories about their family lives, hobbies and share likes and dislikes of everyday life.

6. Brand Your Workplace Image

When was the last time you created an internal workplace document to engage your employees? We’re not talking about sending an email to announce an employee’s birthday or to announce a meeting discussing departmental issues. We are talking about developing specific materials to market your business’s culture to all employees. Learn how to  appreciate internal marketing and marketing materials with custom colors, wall signage, motivational logos, creative letterhead, internal memo tag lines with motivational quotes, daily tips, quick-tip water cooler meetings, promotional e-mail signatures, general office promotional products and daily contests, all of which attract, engage and motivate
younger employees.

7. Rules are Meant to be Broken

As a manager, in a particular situation, you may find that sometimes it is necessary to break a rule to really provide extraordinary service or, to go around a system that is not serving your business just to make things work as they should. The same option should be offered to your staff, with limitations of course. Encourage your employees to bring suggestions to you on how to better the workplace or improve a current policy or method. Empowering a younger employee to ‘think’ and not simply be a robot of habit is a great tool of employee engagement.

8. Make Management Exciting

Believe younger generation employee management is exciting and fun. Have you ever
identified part of your work as difficult, unpleasant or to be avoided? Consider how your employees may start reacting if you showed a side of you that is exciting, fun and creative. If you’re stuck in a routine or have a one track mind when it comes to managing your employees, try choosing to see a new picture and discover your ability to face your employees (and customers) with new energy and a focus on engagement.

9. Track Progress and Celebrate Results

Don’t be afraid to track the progress of your business and celebrate success when it
happens. Hold weekly competitions, find small daily accomplishments to celebrate, set long-term goals with lucrative incentives. As soon as you commit to improving employee engagement and catching their attention with giveaways and contests, the sooner you will begin to raise employee expectations allowing for positive change.

10. Be a Coach

If your younger employees are given difficult tasks in working toward a goal, step in
and coach them. Use gentle, powerful, and thoughtful questions to engage them in conversation, listen well, and suspend your own judgment helping them to find their own answers and ultimately improve employee engagement.

About ScheduleBase

ScheduleBase is online employee scheduling software from Atlas Business Solutions, the leader in providing employee scheduling software. In little to no time, businesses can schedule employees online and communicate work schedules by email, text message and mobile device. Put your scheduling online and save time and money while offering your employees easier access to their schedules and an effective communication tool for you.