In this fourth and final installment in our series on The Future of Leadership, we’ll look at incentives—specifically, how you can motivate promising young employees to stay with your company, take on more leadership roles, and how employee rewards can help.
As essential as it is to create a sustainable leadership pipeline, emerging leaders have to actually want to be at your organization if it’s going to be successful. Similarly, redefining leadership in a way that better speaks to the values of younger team members can only take you so far.
After all, what good is all this effort if people who come through the pipeline don’t stick around?
This brings us to the final piece of the puzzle: motivating employees to want to become a leader at your organization. Rewards for employees should be a mix of intangibles (recognition programs, procedures ensuring fair treatment, respect for proper work-life balance) and concrete benefits (fair compensation, the opportunity to take time off without informal penalty, etc.).
To that end, here’s a list of incentives and ideas to help make your team-building (and team-retaining) that much more successful.
Different Approaches to Employee Rewards: What to Consider
Be Purpose-Driven . . . Enough
It’s a cliché at this point to suggest that a company ought to have a greater purpose. A decade and a half after the founding of TOMS Shoes, the original buy-one-give-one company, cynicism has set in somewhat when it comes to companies marketing themselves as doers of good for the planet or society. (Doing good for company founders is, for some reason, never mentioned!)
Despite this situation, younger generations are still very idealistic. It’s just that they can see through boasts that a company is “changing the world.” If, say, you manufacture spoons, well, your world-changing impact will probably be somewhat limited.
That’s not to say making a high-quality product that improves someone’s life isn’t a worthy pursuit—it is. But framing your efforts in breathless, exaggerated terms won’t get younger people excited to be part of what you’re selling. Likely the opposite, in fact.
Instead of using purpose as a marketing hack to dazzle consumers or a company culture hack to dazzle employees, consider embracing the more modest but more socially beneficial “purpose” of compensating employees fairly, treating all team members with respect regardless of background or time in the workforce, devoting real resources to professional development, and living by your professed values.
Young people are experts at detecting fakeness. So if you say you’re driven by a greater purpose but it doesn’t show up in company operations or employees’ everyday lives, you can’t expect them to stick around for long, much less take up leadership positions down the road.
"To win in the marketplace, you must first win in the workplace."
– Doug Conant, former CEO of Campbell’s Soup Company
Help them Harness their Passion
Studies consistently show that Gen Z and, to a lesser extent, Millennials are more socially conscious than their predecessors.
According to the Deloitte Global 2022 Gen Z and Millennial Survey, a study that polled 14,808 members of Gen Z and 8,412 millennials, “nearly two in five [respondents] say they have rejected a job or assignment because it did not align with their values.”
While having a greater awareness of current issues is undoubtedly a good thing, it can also lead to a potentially fraught workplace.
It’s not exactly news that corporations and politics are a combustible mix, particularly today. A few companies have been able to take a strong political stand without much blowback—and, indeed, may even increase customer loyalty after doing so—while many others have been badly damaged in their attempt to get political.
There may be a middle ground, though: a way to help employees channel their passion for various causes and community service without making your company susceptible to unwanted attention or increased workplace tensions.
One idea is to offer days off for volunteer work. Do your employees feel strongly about expanding voting rights? On one of their service days, they can phone-bank or collect signatures. Maybe they’re interested in helping seniors, or cleaning up a local waterway, or fighting for government transparency. All for the good.
A company culture that values service will make employees feel proud to work there.
If leaders of an organization feel strongly about an issue, then they obviously have the right to take a public stand. More power to them. But by giving employees time off (within reason) to pursue their personal causes, you greatly decrease the risks of a) getting dragged into a can’t-win culture war battle and b) alienating some employees while currying favor with others.
Respect the Balance
Millennials and Gen Zers are a highly sociable species. Outside certain industries where “hustle culture” reigns—though even in those places, this toxic ideology seems to be waning—the average young professional greatly values time away from work. Hanging out with friends and family, exploring new places, going to entertainment events, are all highly prized.
Indeed, in the Deloitte survey, of all the reasons respondents chose to work for their current organization, “good work/life balance” was the number-one response for both Millennials and Gen Zers, even higher than “good salary/other financial benefits.”
If you want to attract and keep good young talent then, creating a rewarding employee culture with a good work/life balance is key.
This may mean offering generous vacation time (and encouraging people to take it), parental or family leave, and/or extras like summer Fridays, which is common in some creative industries. (The verdict on “unlimited PTO,” which is often unlimited, is more mixed.)
Inside your workplace, you can create social-minded policies discouraging or prohibiting email after hours, or allowing people to opt out of messaging tools (like Slack) during certain times of the day, or even on certain days of the week.
Responding instantly to messages from coworkers can be very disruptive to getting work done, just as being expected to respond to an email at all hours of the night can disrupt someone’s personal life.
When it comes to motivating employees, you really don’t have to reach for the moon. Making it easier for people to manage their life responsibilities is perhaps the most underrated type of employee recognition.
Tip
In general, Gen Z and Millennials have a significantly less romantic view of organizations—and, as discussed, leadership—than their parents and grandparents.
The causes of this are hotly contested (Was it the 2008 recession? High levels of student debt? A general feeling of insecurity?), but the reality is not. So automatically expecting emerging leaders to be devoted to your organization without offering them incentives for good work in return is a recipe for disappointment.
Put Some Soul Back in Your Workplace
It’s no secret that organizations are, on the whole, terrible at designing interesting jobs. Too many jobs don’t match the passions and skills of those doing them and are frequently disconnected from strategic relevance. There’s a major cost to this state of affairs.
If the misalignment goes on for too long or feels too overwhelming, employees will check out. Resignation will take over. The employee may use words like “soul-sucking” to describe their workplace.
You don’t have to be a wildly successful organization, rolling in cash, to make work more meaningful.
In an interview I conducted several years ago while working with a company, one exuberant respondent insisted that she truly loved her job. Shocked at her genuine delight, especially since the company had been struggling at the time, I replied, “What do you love about it?” Without hesitation, she declared, “Because it loves me back.”
She went on to explain how her current position was her dream job, providing her with a deep sense of meaning, and how much she enjoyed her colleagues. She even enjoyed doing team-building activities with them! She was beyond satisfied in her role.
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When it comes to most jobs, though, hers is the rare case. Organizations can make it less rare by designing jobs that connect employee skill sets with organizational strategies. Work can also be reshaped around the needs of the people you have, as opposed to how “the organization has always done things.” Emerging leaders see every role as a stepping stone to their next opportunity, so make each step count for your mutual benefit.
Being placed in a meaningful, appropriate role is one of those intangible employee rewards that flies under the radar but is immensely valuable. It’s hard to beat—especially when so many other organizations, your competitors among them, can’t offer it.
The incentives that motivate younger generations may be different than what you’re used to, but they’re certainly within the reach of most organizations, especially larger ones.
A little creativity and willingness to try different things (in consultation with your team members, of course) can buy you goodwill and patience until you find the right mix. Get your motivation right, and you’ll help make sure your pipeline of future leaders gushes for years to come.
Create the Ultimate Employee Reward: An Engaging, Fair Workplace With Excellent Management
Leading effectively is only the beginning—getting your team involved in core business strategies means you need to sharpen your own management skills.
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