LIBA expo helps employers relate to millennials
One of the biggest challenges for employers is understanding why the many young workers are so different from baby boomers and Gen Xers.
They think nothing of job hopping to find a better fit. They're always checking Facebook and Twitter on their phones. In the workplace, they long to be asked to contribute and made to feel like their work and opinions are valued.
That's why, explained Cara Silletto, that she and her fellow 20- to 35-year-old professionals pose a challenge to employers who expect them to wait their turn, as the older generation did, to get a pat on the back or a promotion. The concept of paying dues is foreign to them.
The 34-year-old Silletto, the founder of professional development and training firm Crescendo Strategies, specializes in decoding millennials, those born between 1980 and 2000. Her TED-style talk titled in part "They Drive Me Crazy" came Thursday afternoon during the Louisville Local Business Expoat the Clifton Center in Crescent Hill.
The showcase featuring accounting firms, caterers, financial advisers, media groups and other local companies was aimed at connecting local business members with each other. About 40 signed on quickly last fall when the plan for an inaugural expo for "B2B" members, said Lance Minnis, a Louisville Independent Business Alliance board member and partner with Commonwealth Financial Advisers LLC who led the effort to start the expo.
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Much of the focus of the organization has been on local businesses that serve the public.
"We didn't know what this was going to be like," Minnis said, clearly thrilled that the large downstairs space and a nearby presentation room were brimming with attendees.
At least 400 people, including those connected to their businesses, stopped in.
"We've been overwhelmed with the positive response," Jennifer Rubenstein, the alliance's director, said.
Silletto was among four lined up to offer insights into working with younger employees, building a business through referrals and growing an enterprise's following online. Clifford Kuhn, aka the Laugh Doctor, discussed using humor and gratitude to create an energized workplace.
Relating to millennials, however, is a hot topic because the generation will dominate company payrolls by 2020. Recruiting and retaining them already has become a puzzle to many managers who can't understand what motivates them. They're often viewed as lazy and uninvolved, Silletto said.
The reason is that many were raised in a very different way from their older peers. They were consulted liberally by parents – on where the family should vacation, what movie to see on weekends and what they all should eat for dinner. In short, they were given far more of a say in what their group did at home, and they expect the same egalitarian system at work, she said.
They also have an innate sense of entitlement. Growing up after 1980, credit cards and liberal bank financing allowed their parents to buy bigger homes and nice cars and to deliver an unprecedented load of Christmas gifts each year. So it's no surprise, Silletto added, that young professionals believe they should have cool apartments and nice things after they finish college and start work.
Leah Dienes, the owner of Apocalypse Brew Works and LIBA member, sat in on the talk and said that the observations were spot on when it came to dealing with her two employees, age 24 and 34. She consults them all the time on business decisions.
The pair told her, for instance, that customers would snap up zip-up hoodie sweatshirt with the brewery's bright yellow logo on the back. They ordered a batch in the charcoal grey and they've been a hit, Dienes said, adding that "I tell them all the time, 'You know better than I do what our customers want.' "
Grace Schneider can be reached at 502-582-4082 or email her at gshneider@courier-journal.com.
