How to Keep Your Gen Y Nonprofit Employee

I am one of the 70-odd million members of the oft-dicussed Generation Y born between 1977 to 2002. There is a lot of conversation happening right now concerning how to recruit us, retain us, and use us to build strong and innovative businesses in this country. There is even a great blog dedicated to this topic, written by a group of Gen Y themselves, Employee Evolution. So thankfully, people are starting to realize that we are not "those darn kids" anymore, we are the tech-savvy, idea-laden, energetic workers of the future. So you better be nice to us.

But seriously, understanding what motivates Gen Y is going to be very important in the coming years, especially for nonprofits, who already have retention and turnover issues largely due to long hours and impossible demands. During the last days of the fundraising session I attended last week, the class engaged in a lengthy discussion about how to keep young fundraising staff in their jobs, which tend to be purely administrative. One of the development directors expressed frustration at having her call center staff turning over every 2 years. My initial reaction was: why in the hell would anybody want to stay in a job that's purely administrative forever??? I would consider it a success if a young employee stayed for 2 years at an organization and gained the skills and experience necessary to move on to bigger and better things. The way I see it, nonprofits need to aspire not to keep young workers in dead-end administrative roles, but strive to keep us happy while we're there so we do stay the entire 2 years, as well as help prepare us to take on bigger roles for the good of the entire nonprofit sector. Our class talked about some ways to encourage retention including:

• Provide incentives for good performance
• Encourage and faciliate professional development and mentoring
• Offer ongoing rewards
• Set them up for leadership opportunities
• Promote team-building activities

Lily Cho also offers us some reflections after attending the Global Leaders Summit: The Next Generation of Global Partnerships this June in a Third Sector New England article, "The Future of Nonprofits: Developing Gen Y Staff."

• While many boomers and others excel in unstructured environments, Gen Y workers will want detailed workplans with specific goals at each step and tight deadlines. Remember this is the generation that was tightly scheduled from school to sports to dance and piano lessons growing up.
  
  
• Additionally, these staff members expect to be consulted about the ways in which they can contribute to the solutions developed by your team. Unlike Boomers and Gen Xers, they do not see why they should remain silent about their ideas and “pay their dues” before being a major player on your team. So while they may need more experience before making the final decision, listen to their ideas and glean the best from this tech-savvy, Internet-informed generation.

Penelope Trunk has some thoughts on this issue as well, with a few key suggestions for supervisors on what to offer younger employees to keep them in your organization:

• Flexible hours.When managers institute a policy for measuring work completed rather than hours at the office, employee turnover decreases by more than 50%. Younger workers are the most indignant when it comes to being required to work 9-5 every day. So instituting flexible hours will have the most impact on this group of employees. Don’t be shy about countering a request for a raise with an offer for flexible work days.
  
  
• Training.The average salary increase is four percent. Even if it were double that, you are not going to change anyone’s life with that raise, and they know it. But training and building a new skill set can change someone’s career by opening new doors. So find out what sort of skills your employees are looking to build and help them with that education. Also, keep in mind that training doesn’t have to cost your company a cent. Young people place enormous value on mentoring. They want constant feedback. Offer structured, constant feedback in place of salary increases and promotions. If the mentoring is good, the lack of promotion won’t be a sticking point.
  

As a member of Gen Y, I agree with all these suggestions. And I hope nonprofits catch on sooner than later.