Should Firms Create New Human Resource Practices to Engage Millennials?
探讨企业是否需为千禧一代员工设计新的人力资源实践，基于盖洛普调查发现其敬业度较低，但质疑这是否源于代际特质或其他因素，为管理者决策提供参考。
“Millennials,” the “Net Generation,” and “Generation Y” are what many popular management books and media stories label the youngest generation of workers in our current workforce. Based on the most recent wave of publications “Millennials” appears to be the name that is emerging as the one that will endure in comparing the young workers of today to future generations. Now that these workers born between 1980 and 1994 are moving into essential roles in our multigenerational workforce in larger numbers, advice on attracting, managing, and retaining Millennials has become a hot topic in the business press and in management training programs being offered to companies. Anyone who browses a few of the books on Millennials is likely to learn that this generation is comfortable with diversity; they have grown up in a more ethnically diverse and inclusive society. Millennials also tend to be tech savvy, as they have come of age in a world of smartphones and social media instead of written letters and land lines. While being tolerant and at ease with technology appear to be among their positives, Millennials have been associated with some negatives, mainly that they are high-maintenance employees with an unrealistic sense of entitlement, have an annoying need for constant feedback, and are not loyal to their bosses or companies. These tendencies are often attributed to being raised by overprotective parents who drove them in cars with “Baby on Board” signs in the rear windshields, over managed their schedules, and insisted that everyone on their soccer teams received a trophy regardless of performance. Whether these descriptions of young workers are true or just ridiculous stereotypes, the popular press and many management training programs are making the case that organizations will need to rethink how they recruit and reward their young talent if they want to succeed in retaining their emerging stars. This call to action was highlighted in a recent poll by Gallup, which found that companies in the United States are not doing a particularly great job of engaging young workers. According to Gallup’s State of the American Workplace, Millennial employees report lower levels of engagement than their older co-workers. Clearly, it is debatable whether these low engagement scores are due to unique generational attributes or can be explained by other factors such as maturity levels or the type of entry-level jobs currently available in the workplace. Such open questions make it diffi cult for proactive organizational leaders to decide whether to throw out everything they learned about managing people and start from scratch to create something new, or to pause before investing heavily in designing new Millennial-friendly HR practices. Fortunately, this question was addressed in new research by John Bret Becton (University of Southern Mississippi), Harvell Jack Walker (Auburn University), and Allison Jones-Farmer (Auburn University) that sheds new light on the question of whether this generation’s approach to work and career warrants unique management practices.