By 2025, Millennials will account for 75% of the global workforce. And, at some companies, like Accenture and Ernst & Young, they already account for 2/3 of the entire employee base. Is your financial institution a place where Millennials want to work?
Strong company culture is essential to attracting and retaining Millennial employees — especially in sales positions, where turnover is high and burnout happens all too regularly. A supportive and engaging work culture, empowered by an effective goals and incentive plan, should form the foundation of a sustainable, growth-driven sales strategy.
Here are the top three ways you can build a company culture that will attract and retain Millennial talent at your financial institution.
1. Invest in Technology That Makes Their Lives Easier
When weighing employment options, Millennials prioritize places where they will be empowered to achieve goals — not just in the form of engaged management and competitive salaries, but also in the tech systems they will be asked to work with every day.
A recent study found that 38% of millennials feel outdated collaboration processes hinder their company’s innovation. Millennials are looking to work hard and contribute, but they need the right tools — the kinds of tools they are accustomed to relying on — to do so.
The internal technology stack that a bank invests in speaks to the culture of the organization and is a significant factor for Millennial employees as they decide whether it will be a good fit. Do you have technology that makes their jobs and lives easier?
2. Make Goals Clear — and Empower Your Team to Meet Them
By automating the process of tracking employee goals and incentives, both employees and their supervisors will have access to timely information that helps enact behavioral change and achieve organizational goals. For recruitment purposes, providing staff with the tools they need to meet measurable sales goals and objectives will be essential to attracting and retaining Millennial talent.
As you’re building a plan for your organization, it’s important to make sure that your employees’ goals, as well as your current and long-term business objectives, are known and accessible by everyone on the team. Often, employees don’t know where they stand and there is no easy way to reference that information quickly enough to drive behavior and yield results. It’s your job to let employees know what they need to do to both meet — and exceed — expectations and how those achievements translate into incentives.
Remember that overcomplicated plans confuse employees, reduce job satisfaction, and don’t actually change behavior. On the flip side, clear and achievable milestones promote engagement, spur results, and contribute to stronger company culture. With the right incentive plan, you can steer your institution toward growing core deposits, retaining your most profitable customers, promoting the cross-selling of the right services to the right customer and creating team unity.
3. Provide Feedback and Progress Reports in Real Time
Creating a great work environment for Millennial employees means giving them timely insight into where they stand and how they can improve. Unlike manual systems, where data input can be inconsistent or delayed, you can use a technology platform like 360 View to update information on a daily basis for actionable insight into goals and incentives.
This up-to-date information allows you to track behavior and readjust in real time so that employees know where they stand, and how far they have to go to achieve goals. Having access to timely information will foster a positive company culture that sets your employees — and your institution — up for success.
By being an attractive place to work and leveraging the right tools, financial institutions can bring on younger, digitally-native employees who will help the organization sync with the needs and desires of Millennial prospects.
If you’re ready to invest in your institution’s company culture and recruit top Millennial talent, learn more about how The Growth Platform can help you build a winning Goals & Incentives program.