There was an interesting piece posted on Business Insider a couple of weeks ago that talks about how organizations need to look at providing the millennial generation with a mentor, instead of a cash bonus, to improve retention (http://www.businessinsider.com/young-workers-mentor-2011-7).  While I agree with the part of the message that focuses on the fact that money is not the most important driver, I think we need to take a look at what it is that millennials are really asking for.

While this may seem like semantics, there is an important distinction to be made.  From where I sit, millennials are not necessarily looking for a mentor (I think the message may come across that way because of the manner in which we have conditioned people to think about development).  What they are really saying is that they need access to the contextualized, collective experience of others (i.e., multiple knowledge resources that can help them with a variety of needs).  The process may still be called “mentoring,” but the focus is certainly not on a single person.  They need a dynamic network of advisors; a network that will ebb and flow, just as their learning and knowledge needs do. They don’t hold on to the traditional view of the one mentor who can help them with everything.  In fact, that view works against the way they actually learn.

My favorite part of the article is the quote from Vineet Nayar, who is the Vice-Chairman and CEO of HCL Technologies in India:

"With Generation Y coming into the business, hierarchies have to disappear. Generation Y expects to work in communities of mutual interest and passion -- not structured hierarchies. Consequently, people-management strategies will have to change so that they look more like Facebook and less like the pyramid structures we are used to."

Exactly.  Well said Vineet!  Just like organizational hierarchies need to disappear, so too does the hierarchical approach to mentoring (you know, the one that dictates that the mentee is assigned to a single, more senior mentor with the expectation that this one person will help them with everything). 

Understanding this, we have evolved our product offering over the last two years to accommodate for this shift and to address the need to breakdown traditional hierarchies.  Currently, we see higher adoption for our Topical (Group) and Situational Mentoring processes than for traditional career-based mentoring across our clients.  Millennials are much more comfortable joining these types of engagements, ones that consist of multiple learners and advisors.  They want to be exposed to a variety of perspectives and ideas, so that the learning can happen in a networked fashion.  I encourage you to take a look at our Group Mentoring research to get a sense of the impact it is having on organizations (http://www.3creek.com/research/Group-Mentoring-Research.pdf). 

Our newest version of the application will also “tap the user on the shoulder” and make suggestions about engagements that fit individuals’ learning needs.  Since every user creates a competency profile to highlight where they are strong (and subsequently would be willing to advise others), as well as the competencies they would like to focus on from a development perspective, our matching algorithm is smart enough to identify engagements that might fit a particular user’s needs.  This also aligns well with the Millennial approach to learning since they are accustomed to systems that make suggestions; they like to be made aware of things that might interest them. 

I know that we talk about the Millennial generation quite a bit here at Triple Creek (I’ve written about it before in this blog, we’ve written articles, we’ve conducted webinars), but there is an important reason for this focus.  By the year 2020, more than half of the workforce will consist of Millennials.  This isn’t some type of fad.  What Millennials are doing is ushering in new approaches to the manner that learning needs to take place in organizations.  It would be wise to listen to them.