On retaining millennials

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Well-designed games intrinsically engage players because they satisfy four basic psychological needs: mastery, autonomy, relatedness and purpose – and we can learn a lot from gaming, when it comes to employee satisfaction and engagement.

There has been much debate on retaining millennials in the market research industry, but the crux of this discussion is not about improving the office ‘look’ or buying more beanbags – it’s about making the game better. Ergo, it’s about satisfying the four basic psychological needs to create an intrinsically engaged millennial workforce.

Ask yourself: when was the last time you offered any autonomy to your employees? Have you given them any time to work on a project the way they want to, so encouraging problem-solving skills, innovation and even failure (which they can learn from)?

When do your employees experience mastery – allowing them to grow in confidence and competency and, in turn, notch up the difficulty level on the challenges they face day to day at work? Millennials, like everyone else, want to feel that they’re not just learning, but also using existing knowledge as a foundation on which to build.

Purpose: when was the last time your staff were included in the wider picture? Do they even understand your company’s mission statement or philosophy? Does your company actually have a philosophy or are you just about making money? (Hint: if the answer is ‘just about making money’ then already you’ve turned off the millennials.)

Remember that this generation doesn’t just want to work for a company – they want to work for a company that’s changing the world for the better. They want their employer to be doing something new or breaking ground in some way, whether it’s through product, service, innovation or client relationships.

Relatedness: do your staff feel they can relate to their colleagues? Their superiors? Their clients?

Perpetuating engagement so millennials stay in market research isn’t just about having an office with fancy tech, or glass walls instead of brick (or vice versa), or open-plan offices. Millennials can see through that material façade in a Snapchat instant. You could argue, that to millennials, the office look doesn’t matter much at all.

Take those who slog it out building businesses from scratch as an example. They do so from garages and dormitories and bedrooms… I know I did. And why was I intrinsically engaged, starting my own company? And why do millennials stick around with start-ups even though they may be financially poor and working out of cold garages? Because the four psychological needs are satisfied. 

Companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple are attracting our talented young researchers. Why? Because they’re better at satisfying those needs. These organisations have award-winning programmes that give employees time to come up with their own projects (autonomy) and run innovation competitions that have a tangible impact on their day-to-day work (relatedness, purpose and mastery).

Google is well-known for the autonomy it allows its employees; they can work on things that interest them for 20% of their time. Listen to Dan Pink’s TED talk to hear about the amazing results it gets.

If you don’t believe that the problem of retaining millennials in market research can be solved by satisfying the four psychological needs, then let’s talk about Tom De Ruyck.

He was a 20-something working at InSites Consulting. He’s been there for 10 years now and just look what he’s done. Moreover, look at what InSites have let him – and encouraged him, to do.

De Ruyck has spoken at industry conferences, written and published papers, travelled the world, and has even become a co-inventor of a (patented) software programme. His job title when he started? Junior consultant. What is he now? De Ruyck is the managing partner.

His LinkedIn profile shows he was promoted roughly every year (building his sense of mastery and purpose) and, in that time, he worked on outside projects related to his field, such as being a keynote speaker, a professor at IÉSEG School of Management in Lille, France, (autonomy) and he’s co-founder and president of the BAQMaR (the Belgian Association for Quanti and Quali Marketing Research) conference – more autonomy and relatedness.

I have no idea what the InSites Consulting offices look like but I’m sure De Ruyck’s tenure there is less to do with the office look, and more about the conditions in which his engagement has been perpetuated over time.

For the market research industry to retain millennials, it must understand how to engage people intrinsically to build happy workforces that can grow with our businesses. Just like De Ruyck at InSites.

Betty Adamou is founder of Research Through Gaming