The secret to keeping your younger employees happier at work …

And it's not letting them work at home in their pyjamas

If you were to believe everything you read on LinkedIn you’d think that the secret to keeping your Gen Z employees happy would be to let them work from home in their pyjamas and give them loads of flexibility to go to the gym when they wanted. The latest scientific research doesn’t quite agree …

According to research, this is not every twenty year old’s dream

What made my younger employees happier?

I used to run a company with fifty people: As any business owner knows, running a company is a bit of a rollercoaster. For me though, the hardest part was when someone handed in their notice and left.

I felt I’d failed.

My whole company philosophy had been based around making people happy. I had believed that if my team was happy then everything else would just fall into place. Consequently everything we did was centred around our team and clients, so when someone left I thought I hadn’t succeeded.

In our exit interviews everyone always told us they were happy, and they never had anything bad to say about the company or the management. They always told us that the only reason for leaving was to get a higher pay or for a change of scene. I was sure though, in many cases, there was something else, something we weren’t doing and something our team couldn’t articulate.

Then one of our developers came to visit a year after leaving and told us about his new job …

He told us; it wasn’t as fun there, he had to work longer hours and didn’t have the flexibility that we gave him but … in a year’s time he’d be leading his team, in two years he’d be a division manager and, if things went well in the company, he’d been told he could be senior management within three years.

Whether this happens, who knows? But he saw a future and a career, and for him that was what gave him the most happiness and drive.

Don’t forget your younger workers

When I talk to team leaders there is often a disconnect between what they perceive as their team’s needs and their actual needs. As most team leaders are not in their early twenties they often focus on flexibility and ownership, and pay and perks to boost team morale and forget the importance of seeing a future.

However, according to research last year, for younger workers, learning is one of the most important drivers of workplace satisfaction.

Tip of the week:

If you are a leader, help your team visualise their future. Tell them where they can be in the future and, importantly, show them what they need to do to get there.

If you are an employee or a solopreneur, sit down, visualise your future and then work out what you need to do to get there.

A feeling that you have an opportunity for growth is one of the five essentials for workplace wellbeing, it is based on the human need for learning and accomplishment.

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I am Richard Clarke, I write, speak and teach about workplace happiness and how you can use the science of wellbeing to improve team performance. If you want to make your team perform better or just want to make them a little happier I run company workshops, webinars and keynote talks. You can view my services on richardclarke.eu.