Member Article

Educating Millennials - Not quite what it seems

How we learn

You could be forgiven for thinking that Millennials are wholly different to the rest of us given the number of articles written about them. However, fundamentally they are the same as the rest of us; the principles about how people learn are no different for Millennials as they are for everyone else. Specifically, it needs to be relevant, interesting, engaging and useful. Content needs to be taught in a way that maintains interest throughout. Begin with the end in mind

Similarly, it matters not whether you are a ‘Millennial’, from ‘Generation X’ or a ‘Baby Boomer’, the focus for development is to enable the business to perform better. Therefore the starting position is the way of thinking, the skills and capabilities employees need in order to deliver the strategic objectives. Working back from this dictates the focus of any learning intervention. No excuse for hard work

Most importantly, whilst much is said about the importance of work life balance for Millennials, the inescapable truth is that whether you wish to be a CEO, a solo musician or an elite athlete, there is no substitute for hard work and you must accept that sacrifices have to be made along the way. The further and faster you wish to progress through an organisation, the more you have to dedicate discretionary effort to this endeavour. In short, becoming a CEO is unlikely to be achieved with a 9-5 mentality. The lifestyle sought is a function of the trade-offs people are prepared to make.

Style matters

What remains is a question of style. In this, there are variations. Millennials are used to using technology and being able to find the answers they want through search engines, as well as friends and peers via social media. This population of ‘screenagers’ are comfortable consuming content through devices, and this content has to compete for attention with everything else on that device. Technology enables real-time collaboration, anytime, anywhere working and access to a vast resource of information. In this, learning how to work virtually is a significant benefit. Making things into a game with ‘high scores’ rather than grades appeals to a generation fed on a diet of computer games. The social aspect of ‘social media’ ensures collaboration is both easier to achieve and of great benefit to the learning process. All of this means less need for face-to-face. However, it is always important to remember that the focus for all technology developments in communication is to replicate the power of face-to-face interactions. They are not a replacement for, nor as good as physically being in the presence of someone else with whom you wish to communicate.

What does this mean for Learning & Development?

At Epiphanies LLP, we have distilled our learning about educating Millennials into 10 key principles:

1. Know the outcome you wish to achieve through the learning intervention. Be clear on how this contributes to the business outcome and have considered the opportunity cost of this activity
2. Know how you will measure the success of your intervention and build this in at the outset
3. Never neglect the core principles of a great learning experience. Do not be distracted by the technology - technology exists to deliver an outcome and is not an end in itself. Use technology judiciously
4. Use whatever tools and techniques you can to remove any friction that will get in the way of people learning
5. Finding material is easy, curating great material is harder - make it easy for people to access the best content relevant to their need
6. Teach people how to think critically. Equip them with the skills to determine what is and is not good content
7. Define the way you would like people to behave throughout the learning journey and create the context that drives that behaviour. For example, if you want to see people collaborate, measure collaboration. If you want to see value, build in business objectives
8. Don’t get hung up on when and how people work on the content (unless it is a core behaviour you wish to see), instead encourage them to exploit the technology available to them to devise the learning mechanisms that work best for them
9. Set clear standards of what you wish people to achieve and monitor and measure these
10. When designing a learning intervention, collaborate with in-house colleagues - they know the business better, they know the culture better and together the combination of our insights across multiple businesses, multiple sectors and delivering in different countries can make for a powerful team

Summary

Working with Millennials is largely the same as working with any other population of people. The differences come in the medium for those interactions. The exploitation of technology to deliver learning, if it is to be successful, must be based on sound principles of education.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Epiphanies LLP .