You can love or hate the Millennials, but you can never ignore them. They are everywhere. They are the generation that understands the digital world and transforming our future. They are often called ‘digital natives’. This generation was born after the internet revolution and are therefore spending most of their life ‘digitally’. They eat, drink, and sleep technology.
Business Gifts for the Millennial Workforce
When it comes to work, this generation is ready to have fun. That doesn’t mean they are unprofessional. Millennials just want the freedom to create their own space and implement their own ideas. This generation has been heavily inspired by the internet and they have more knowledge and information on various subjects, compared to the previous generations. They just want to implement that knowledge and ideas in their workplace.
Employers are apprehensive that millennials will switch jobs frequently, holding many more jobs than the ‘baby boomer’ generation due to their great expectations. However, that is not true. They also look for job satisfaction and recognition exactly like the others.
Millennials want continual growth in their workplace, so they expect ongoing learning. They are attracted to employers who offer excellent training and development programs for exactly that reason. Therefore, always make the workplace a learning experience for the millennials.
Millennials associate job satisfaction with a free flow of information, strong connectivity to supervisors or mentors. They expect close relationships with their supervisors. They want to be taken seriously.
This generation wants instant gratification and therefore they want feedback on their work more frequently than the previous generation. They would want to get personalized feedback almost every week. They appreciate quick and personalized feedback. They expect appreciation to come as soon as they do something commendable.
Business Gifts for Millennials that Do Things Differently
Flexibility and Work From Home (WFH)
Unlike previous generations, millennials value the work-life balance. They prefer to work from home, something the previous generation considered impossible and unprofessional. This generation prefers to finish their job in a flexible manner and love to work in their pajamas.
Learning new technology
Millennials love to learn. They are always expecting to learn something from their employers or clients. They were born after the internet boom and technology is their middle name, yet they want to keep on learning and implementing new ideas and technology.
Time off
Similar to flexible hours, they also enjoy going off the radar, once in a while. They enjoy taking time off and go on a sabbatical from time to time. However, these breaks are like oxygen to them. They do come back and get the work done.
How to Appreciate the Millenials
It’s important to understand that when it comes to loyalty, millennials will feel more valued and trusted when you respect their work-life balance. This means offering incentives like flexibility, work-from-home hours, and unlimited paid time off.
1. Recognize Frequently
Millennials appreciate feedback and acknowledgment. In fact, 42% want feedback every week. Try to recognize achievements as soon as possible, so it reinforces the behaviors you want to encourage.
2. Make It Spontaneous
Traditional corporate event based recognition has very little impact to increase the motivation and engagement of the millennials. 51% of millennials believe that receiving a milestone award has no impact on their view of their jobs. The millennials would rather prefer peer-to-peer recognition or a more instant and spontaneous recognition by their supervisors.
3. Be Specific
Recognize the specific behaviors or actions of the millennial employee. That would be more effective than just rewarding someone with the employee of the month certificate. Specificity is what millennials want in the workplace.
4. Personalize Recognition
Millennials are notoriously introspective and self-aware. Therefore, generic recognition is meaningless to them. They would appreciate it only if you personalize the rewards. Personalizing awards would make recognition more meaningful, said 68% of millennials in a survey.
5. Make It a Learning Experience
Millennials respond well to mentoring from senior employees and like to consider their manager as more of a coach who supports their professional goals. However, millennials prefer to learn by application and do not like being told. Communication is important to this generation, they may even leave a company if they find their boss disengaged.
Considering the above factors, it seems appropriate that millennials would prefer personalized gifts more than any other generation.
Personalized Gifts Ideas for Millennials
Millennials seek instant gratification. They don’t just crave long-term incentives like promotions or titles; instead, they need more frequent and tangible awards. They appreciate recognition for even the smallest contribution that they made.
For Dedicated Service
If your employee went the extra mile on his or her work, reward them. Acknowledge his special dedication to the team and motivate him to keep up the good work.
For Staying Late
If an employee puts in extra hours, reward him to show how their hard work doesn’t go unnoticed.
For Client Service
A company is nothing without your clients – so if an employee is a master communicator, give him a personalized gift to encourage his work.
For Punctuality
If an employee is always on time, give a gift to reward his or her punctuality and also encourage them to keep doing so.
For Being a Team Player
Being a team player is not easy and a millennial employee would appreciate it if you reward them with a personalized item for this.
What Inspires the Millennials?
Similar to employees, millennial clients also seek instant gratification. They also hate generic gifts. Millennials want a fun work environment, personalized connections, and clear communication. Millennials are a complicated bunch, but not impossible to understand. Experts are suggesting that effective ways to motivate this young workforce are a mix of motivational and gratitude based gifts. Together they create a perfect combination of motivation for good work and instant satisfaction that millennials so crave. However, your motivational gift shouldn’t be supererogatory, or else your good intentions may seem patronizing. Millennials just want recognition for their hard work and ideas.
EvaBot addresses each of these characteristics. EvaBot uses a friendly artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, to ask recipients about their preferences, and send them a perfectly personalized gift.
Millennials understand artificial intelligence and would be happy to share their preferences with AI. The AI in turn would send them the personalized gift that they would love. It’s a win-win situation.
Eva is the perfect option if you want to impress your millennial clients with personalized gifts. Millennials are now comprising the majority of the workforce, therefore, what they want in the workplace matters now more than ever. Doing so can help you bond with your client better and ultimately strengthen your company’s culture as well.
[…] Retaining employees by keeping them happy depends upon establishing reciprocal loyalty. When an employer makes their jobs feel meaningful and supports and encourages their professional development, they feel valued and recognized. […]