Millennials are the hardest generational group to engage in workplace culture. They provide a challenge to every leadership team, culture committee and HR group around the country. But engaging millennials in your company culture can pay dividends, motivating them and connecting them to your organizational goals, which in turn can increase their productivity and retention rate. Wellness can serve as that common thread: it benefits both the organization and its millennial employees.
Here are three ways you can engage millennials in your company wellness culture:
1. Invest in Engagement
Engaged employees are invested employees. When employees are engaged in both culture and organizational goals, they make an emotional and physical investment in your organization. For millennials, that translates into sticking around, avoiding the job-hopping and job-shopping these workforce’s youngest members are known for. Wellness programs are a great gateway to engage millennials at your organization, beginning a trend toward longer tenure and deeper investment.
2. Expand on Wellness
Wellness culture doesn’t just need to focus on physical health and healthcare. Emotional health, and even financial health, are important pieces of the employee wellness equation. Millennials value holistic wellness: the health of their wallets and retirement savings can be as engaging as a yoga or spin class. Employers have an opportunity to educate their millennial employees, giving them information they may not be exposed to otherwise.
Diversifying your wellness portfolio gives millennials more ways to get involved with your organization and to make their distinct contribution to their workplace.
3. Make Things Convenient
Millennials value their vacation and personal time over almost anything else. They are the first generation of American workers who carry their email accounts and workplaces in their pockets, accessing them at home and anywhere else they go. This gives millennials more opportunities to engage with work outside of the office than any previous generation. One way to provide convenience is to include services like physical check-ups, flu shots, gym classes and eye exams in their work time to save vacation and sick time. Bringing convenience to the office is an opportunity to give millennials back the time they spend at home working (think: responding to emails, being available at odd hours). This is a small way to show appreciation and acknowledge their hard work.
Keep in mind that although millennials can be incredibly hard to engage at work, finding ways to involve them in company culture can reap benefits for both employee and employer. Engaging millennial employees in a company wellness program provides added value: it not only gets millennials to invest in your organization, it also gets them to stick around.
Want to learn more about how to engage millennials through employee incentives? Start with branded incentives that they engage with in their personal lives, or include useful items like gas, groceries or healthcare items to motivate and reward.
