Okay, so let's talk about gamification. Now millennials
have obviously grown up with tech. And so the consumerization
of technology means that we expect our business tools to be
as easy to use as our personal tools. Now, what that means is
that we want to be able to send voice notes in like messenger or
WhatsApp, you know, we want to be able to send emojis in no
matter what work app we're using. So if it's slack, or
teams or Google Chat, you know, we want to be able to respond
with emojis, it's also really important that things are cloud
based, easy to access from any device that we're working with
millennials hate having to dial into VPN, or use remote desktop,
you know, all the old ways of doing business with a server, or
driving to the office, thankfully, those days are
pretty much done now. But anything that feels cumbersome,
technology wise, is just not going to work for millennials.
Now, if you have tech systems that are outdated, or are not
easy to use, then you get to find your team, I just gonna go
around them and use something else anyway, they're just not
going to engage with tools that you have on board. Now in the
tech world, we call that shadow IT, where the team will actually
potentially even spin up a separate app to get their work
done, which is outside of the control of you, the business
owner, just because the tools that they've been given have not
been adequate for them to get their work done. So ensuring
that the tools that you're using are as easy to use, if not
easier than consumer based apps is really important. And that's
going to help you go a long way with engaging team members who
are used to using that tech. And so bridging that conversation
over to gamification. Well, it's pretty important to recognize
that my generation of millennials grew up with
computer games. And we grew up with a lot of computer games,
and I went to a Steiner School. So I didn't have a Gameboy or a
PlayStation or anything like that when I was young, but my
parents divorced. And in high school, I actually got a
PlayStation started playing computer games as well. And I'm
part of a whole generation that grew up, you know, trying to
earn points, having a lot of time spent grinding away on
games, but also getting dopamine based rewards from those games
really frequently, as well. And so that's really ingrained into
us. And you know, we are the Candy Crush generation, where we
want to be entertained by our devices. But that also extends
into how we work as well. Now, let me give you a bit of an
insight into how that translates into the workspace, if you're
playing a game, and maybe it's a role playing game, and you've
got to grind away and earn points or collect badges or
collect tools and those kinds of things. You know, you get
rewards when you're grinding away at things and working in a
business is in a way, grinding away. Now for most traditional
businesses, they'll do a salary review and a performance review
once a year or maybe once every six months. But that's a really
long time to a millennial, when we're used to grinding away at
something for maybe a few weeks, and then getting a reward or
maybe even a few hours and then getting a reward a year is a
really, really long time. And so some more senior business owners
have been frustrated with Gen Y millennials, only sticking
around for a few months in their businesses and then hopping
between different jobs. And you know, we used to celebrate if we
got somebody to one year to stick around in our business.
And you know, we've still found even today that young people are
more likely to move between different roles and different
businesses. However, there's a little trick to this. And one of
the little tricks is to have more frequent rewards, and more
frequent progress for your team members. And I read this amazing
article a couple of years ago, and it was just absolutely
brilliant. Basically, the article said to give your
millennial employees pay rises every quarter. Now, that doesn't
mean you give them more and more and more money over the course
of the year, basically, you take what you would normally give
over the course of the Union divided by four. So it ends up
being the same amount of money, but you give a pay rise every
quarter. And that will feel a bit more like a game where you
get regular rewards, and you regularly level up. Now there's
other ways that you could extend this as well. Other ideas may be
to have different role changes, or different you know, names for
different roles where someone can progress more quickly. It's
not to say that you're going to make up fake or phony roles, you
know, but perhaps if someone is a project consultant, they might
be a project consultant, level one, project consultant, level
two, project consultant level three, see where I'm going with
bringing in the gaming type, you know, speech in the gaming type
fundamentals here. What that allows your team to do is feel
like when I'm putting in the effort, I get the reward one
year is just too long for someone to wait. And so having
little mini checkpoints or little mini milestones can
really allow your team to feel more engaged in the process. And
that's going to translate to other areas of the business. If
your team have the opportunity for let's say, for example,
doing some training or upskilling. Well, they're more
likely to engage with that if they know that Oh, at the end of
this, I'm going to become a project manager level three. Oh,
what's the next thing How do I become a project manager level
four. You see where I'm going with this? All of this,
you know frequent rewards are really speaks to how millennials
brains have been wired. As we've grown up with a culture of
technology based gaming. My final tip for you is that
business strategy is a team sport. What I mean by that is to
have your team involved, like your mission and values in the
actual strategy and execution of your business. What that means
is when you're doing your yearly or your quarterly or your
seasonal strategic planning, to actually make that a team
effort, bring everybody in and bring everybody's input in. Now,
many business owners think, Oh, well, you know, like, this is a
hierarchal business, and I'm the business owner. So I should be
setting the strategy and just having that trickle down. Well,
that's not quite the best way to do things. Millennials have
grown up believing that their voices are important, and the
voices are important to a business, I know that in my
business, we work much better. And we listen to all of the
voices that are a part of our team. And so when we work on the
strategy, the business, the business leaders and myself, the
business founder, we'll have, you know, a good idea of roughly
where we want to go, you know, rough idea of the target. But we
bring in everybody's input to actually help us with that, and
help refine what that target looks like help us refine what
the practicals look like, and allow everyone to bring their
ideas to the table. Now, why does this become so effective?
Well, if everyone has contributed and collaborated to
the business strategy, well, they're going to have a lot more
ownership in actually executing that strategy. If someone has
just shared something with you that you have to do just because
they said so well, you're probably going to be a whole lot
less aligned and a whole lot less motivated to actually take
that on, if you don't feel that you've had a part in it. But if
everyone feels that they've contributed to where the
business is going, and what strategies are going to be
implemented, well, they're going to be much more likely to be
engaged. I'd love to know if this video was useful for you.
Please let me know your thoughts in the comments below. Maybe let
me know if there's any strategies that you have for
managing leading and working with millennials in your
business. Now, if you're a business owner, and you're
looking to get more out of your tech, and you're new to the
channel, well hit that subscribe button and have a look at some
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