Millennials feel ignored at work, but 'reverse mentoring' is giving them a voice

Thursday, 16 August 2018

Joanna Shyu, millennial project manager from IBM, and mentor to her boss Mike Smith.

IBM's millennial employees are getting a lot of one-on-one time with the company's senior leaders.

But it's not to listen to inspiring pep talks, or being mentored to one day take over at the top.

In IBM's 'reverse mentoring' scheme they are the mentors, and their seniors are the ones who are doing the learning.

The Global Women Inclusion report, released this week, indicates many millennial employees aged 24-35- especially male, do not feel they are being listened to, or included in their employers' decision-making.

**READ MORE:

Mike Smith says he realises he needs to understand the millennial mindset.

* Tears of the chief executive

* Millennial voices stifled by employers, Global Women research finds**

'Millennial men have the lowest overall workplace inclusion scores followed by millennial women,' Global Woman Inclusion report author Sonia Breeze found.

Sonia Breeze from Deloitte found millennial men have the lowest overall workplace inclusion scores, followed by millennial women.

'Millennials make up a third of New Zealand's workforce, and they are particularly concerned with the social, environmental and cultural impacts of organisations,' she said.

And yet, they appeared to feel trapped on the outer in companies where traditional hierarchical structures of power and decision-making dominated.

Research shows clearly that while millennials share the same kinds of aspirations as many of their older peers, they place a special value on feeling connected to each other and to the leadership.

They also had a thirst to be heard.

And yet, Deloitte found in previous research, many companies did not understand that.

IBM decided to create a concrete millennial-leadership connection through reverse mentoring, where senior leaders are mentored by their younger colleagues.

Mike Smith, IBM's New Zealand managing director, is being mentored by Joanna Shyu, a project manager and digital consultant.

Smith meets with Shyu every couple of weeks, and he's been glad of the help on using social media more effectively to build his personal brand, but he's also learning about millennials, who now make up roughly a third of the New Zealand workforce, and 100 per cent of its future leadership.

'As a leader I need to understand the millennial mindset,' Smith said.

'This all started when a bunch of millennials came to me ahead of a strategy meeting I was going to run, and said, 'We want to have some input'.'

Ports of Auckland has changed a lot over the last 17 years.

That conversation led to the creation of the IBM Millennials Forum.

It's held four times a year, and is designed to give millennials a voice, raising their own concerns as well as providing feedback on company strategy.

'It makes a valuable contribution,' Smith said.

Shyu was at the creation of the forum, and one of its first requests was to bring in reverse mentoring.

'For us, it was an opportunity to speak more to the leadership team,' she said.

Ports of Auckland's Angelene Powell built a graduate training programme that includes mentoring between senior leaders and graduates.

Powell has been at the port for 17 years, a period during which it has shifted from being an aggressively male environment to one where respect for everyone - regardless of age, colour, creed and gender - is a minimum standard of behaviour.

In building the graduate programme, Powell decided on making sure it would develop potential leaders of the future for the company.

Xu Zhao Yan and Jerusha Sharp are going through the Ports of Auckland graduate programme.

She also wanted them to be visible, and to have a voice.

'One of the modern challenges is how do we integrate these converging generations? One way is breaking down that hierarchical approach,' she said.

The idea was to connect young people coming in to the business with senior leaders from the get-go.

'In most graduate programmes, graduates come in and get lost in the mire of organisations, and they don't get to connect with senior leadership until many years into their career. We wanted to break that norm.'

So as well as rotating into the different areas of the port's business (finance, infrastructure, sustainability, planning, etc), in each rotation they were paired with a senior leader for mentoring, with both expected to mentor the other.

Xu Zhao Yan and Jerusha Sharp are going through the programme after graduating from the University of Auckland and AUT respectively.

Both are enjoying the contact with senior leaders.

As members of the graduate programme they are also expected in each rotation to prepare a vision for the future of that area of port business, which they present to senior leaders.

Sometimes the challenges they pose to current thinking are stark.

Yan's challenge on how the port may need to change when smart AI cars disembark themselves, and perhaps even fly themselves to car yards for sale, is an example.

TIPS TO ENGAGE MILLENNIALS

Global Women has developed a tip sheet for companies wanting their millennials to feel more included.

* Introduce agile ways of working that enhance connectedness, such as setting up blended virtual teams that work on a particular issue.

* Embrace flexibility to enable more men to share caregiving responsibility through things like enhanced paternity leave, flexible hours or part-time work.

* Ask millennials for their perspectives and wherever possible involve them in decision-making.

* Make sure the enablement of learning is central to millennials' sense of value and belonging.

* Promote connections across the organisation beyond their immediate teams.

* Provide them with opportunities to zig-zag across the organisation to get exposure and experience in different parts of the business.

* Have accessible leaders that promote opportunities organically.