Having just come off Small business week, I’ve heard from many employers that their biggest struggle is finding skilled people, motivated people and people who want to stick around. In the human resources industry, Millennials In The Workplace has been the common theme of training and education to engage and retain them … as they’re now the largest population in the workforce this year.

Click here to watch my new video on this hot topic.

I see this as a double whammy for employers.  A worker shortage, compiled with a large population of workers who think quite differently than their older colleagues.

So … What to do about it?  Here’s my hottest tip:

Create an inclusion based culture 

Yes, there are competing interests between generations in the workplace.

Yes, there are demands and desires of the younger workers that are diametrically opposed to their senior counter parts, but guess what?

That’s ok.  It isn’t right or wrong.  It doesn’t have to be black or white.  We have different generations, different personality styles, different ethnic backgrounds, different morals, different values but so what?  Why do we seek ‘same’ in a workplace culture with such differences?

Inclusion based culture is about: 
– Listening to your team’s different perspectives
– Placing value on that feedback
– Benefiting from it

It’s about achieving a new way of thinking, and your whole team, inclusively, has the best answer for what’s best for the culture of their workplace.

I’ve got lots of ideas, based on tons of research on the topic, and so I’ve created an interactive program called “Engaging and Retaining Millennials“, but honestly, it could be called “Engaging and Retaining Anyone” because when you really look at the solution, we’re different people who all want the similar things.

There’s your hot tip!  Create an inclusion based culture, where everyone’s feeling engaged to dig in and play nice in the sandbox.

Call me because your greatest leadership day is with Penny Tremblay.