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With Millennials entering the workforce, it is imperative to learn what makes this new generation of employees tick, what is going to keep them wanting to work for your organization, year after year, and what team building ideas you should implement now to garner the most success in the future.

Finding team building ideas to engage and inspire employees is a widely explored topic, and the TIGERS Success Series explored the topic in March 2014 with the article, Employee Benefits Program “Dream Manager” is Revolutionary Among Team Building Ideas. Along with the following articles from other sources, this article offers some insights and team building ideas for leaders on keeping team members satisfied within your organization: Hired Today, Gone Tomorrow, 3 Things Employers Need to Understand about Millennials, and 4 Unconventional Ways to Keep Millennials From Jumping Ship.

Consider implementing some of the following team building ideas to inspire and motivate your Millennial team members.

Start a dialogue from day one. According to Hired Today, Gone Tomorrow, Millennials expect to stay with organizations for just one to two years before moving on to something else. Many place more importance on personal advancement over commitment to their employers. This means if your employees do not feel that they have the opportunity to advance within your organization (and on their timetable), then they go out and find somewhere that they feel they do. The best way to keep this from happening is by starting the dialogue about expectations early, so both you and your employees can grow in the same direction. This is also a good time to discuss training that is required for advancement and what is necessary from a performance standpoint once training is delivered.

Take a page from the Dream Manager Program playbook. You can read more about the success of the program from the full article Employee Benefits Program “Dream Manager” is Revolutionary Among Team Building Ideas., but essentially the program at JANCOA Janitorial Services helps employees achieve some of their dreams, even if those dreams have nothing to do with the company. While team members have furthered their education, bettered their financial situations, and even adopted a child through the program, JANCOA Janitorial Services has benefited from a 300 percent decrease in employee turnover, all while bettering the lives of their employees.

Channel your employees’ passions. One thing to be said about Millennials is that they want to feel a sense of purpose in their positions, and they want to be passionate about what they are doing, says 3 Things Employers Need to Understand about Millennials.   If you understand that your employees want to make a difference, then you can put the right people in the right positions to achieve successful results.

Listen. Listen to your employees’ needs, listen to their ideas, and listen to their passions. According to 4 Unconventional Ways to Keep Millennials From Jumping Ship , the relationship you make with your employees impacts employee retention, and you cannot create and sustain a successful relationship without doing your fair share of listening. After you listen and understand their motivations and issues, make changes and implement solutions that work for both you and your employees.

Build better teams. After listening to your employees and understanding their needs, focus on aligning their passions and needs with the needs of the organization. One way to achieve this is through well-thought-out and dynamic teams whose members work together to reach a common goal. A seminar and workshop, such as the 6 Principles The Build High Performance Problem Solving Teams Leadership Clinic teaches you how to build more cooperative and productive problem solving teams by first establishing group norms that promote  trust, interdependence, genuineness, empathy, risk and success on teams and within team behavior.

Millennials may require you to  shift your leadership style to include coaching skills, but with the above team building ideas, you and your employees can benefit from shared goals and successes.

 About TIGERS Success Series, Inc.

TIGERS is a Bend, Oregon team building consultant that licenses and trains HR Executives and Management Consultants to use powerful team development tools that help to transform organizations into the type of workplaces employees enjoy returning to after a couple of days off.  This includes a team building exercise that helps team members discuss constructive team behavior that promotes high levels of collaboration and trust, strategic team problem solving facilitations, a website for continuing education and survey methodology that helps to track team improvement over time — as well as —  identifying the teams next improvement opportunity.  Join us in the 6 Principles that Build High Performance Teams leadership clinic to learn how to correctly develop new teams for complex organizational problem solving and change initiatives. Learn the steps required to transform low performing teams into excellent ones.  Click here for the 2015 East Coast clinic