My Voice: Millennials anything but lazy, entitled

The recent news around Mitchell-based Trail King and their unfathomable turnover in the last year has spurred much debate in the circles in which I run. If you'll recall, the company has onboarded 280 new employees in the last year and all but one of them have left the organization.

I enjoyed reading this piece very much. As the president of Click Rain, I face many of the same challenges as Trail King, but on a very different level. Click Rain is a small, 30-person company also dealing with talent shortages, but in a white-collar industry. While much focus in South Dakota is on the trades and skilled labor needs, the technology sector and other white-collar fields face very similar battles. With recruiting being a challenge, retention becomes all the more vital. Critical, even.

Let me be very clear on millennials, gen Y and the so-called entitlement generation. They are amazing employees. The oldest employee in our office is 40 years old, so I have become very accustomed to what it takes to recruit, retain and grow this sometimes fickle demographic. And to be frank, money is a very small part of that equation. Sure, they need to pay the bills and have some fun, but they are looking for much more than compensation when assessing their career options.

Trail King appears to offer fairly competitive compensation, attendance bonuses, referral bonuses, overtime opportunities and more. These are all great opportunities that assume compensation and wages are the driving factor for the millennial and gen Y generations. This is a mistake that many baby boomers – who are more driven by compensation – often make when leading a younger demographic. In essence, they are wired to work very differently than their leadership.

To recruit and retain the "new employee" of today, businesses need to focus on culture over wages. People over profits. Happy hours instead of overtime hours. Sound like a recipe for business bankruptcy? In all actuality, the result is quite the opposite and I can point to numerous success stories from companies who have embraced this new workplace culture philosophy.

When I interview employees today, they are asking questions – really great questions – about the character of our company. Does the company give back to the community – not just financially, but does it give employees the chance to serve on the company dime? Does the company offer opportunities to grow as a person rather than an employee, providing seminars on financial literacy, time management, wellness and other "non-work" topics? Does management take the employees out for a beer and some darts at 4 p.m. on a Friday? Yes, that shuts down production for an hour, which directly impacts the bottom line. But what does that hour do for morale and team building — and ultimately, retention?

At Click Rain, we offer a service and learning benefit to all employees, full-time or part-time. This benefit gives employees an extra week of paid time off annually to go on an international service trip. We also pay for half of the cost of the trip. To date, we've had nearly half of our staff take advantage of this benefit and serve in places like Haiti, Jamaica, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic. Does this benefit cost us a fair amount of money annually? Absolutely. However, is the investment in the person worth the investment by the company? The return on investment is too great for me to even calculate.

Investing in employees is much more than what shows up on their paycheck every two weeks. In the highly competitive employment market in South Dakota, it's critical for employers in all verticals to begin shifting their culture to one of inclusion, service and family in order to retain the new workforce that desires to put community and home life ahead of the making profits for the man.

MY VOICE

Paul Ten Haken, 37, is president of Click Rain, a digital marketing firm in Sioux Falls. My Voice columns should be 500 to 700 words. Submissions should include a portrait-type photograph of the author. Authors also should include their full name, age, occupation and relevant organizational memberships.

Send columns to Argus Leader, Box 5034, Sioux Falls, SD 57117-5034, fax them to 605-331-2294 or email them to letters@argusleader.com.

Related: In October, Jodi Schwan highlighted companies' efforts to retain millennials. Schwan: Millennials – and why they matter in workplace