Companies need to develop millennial friendly programmes, Lisa Smith, speaking at FutureScope, May 10th

By @SimonCocking. Interesting interview with Lisa Smith. You can see her speaking at FutureScope on May 10th, and you can buy tickets here.

1 min pitch for what you are doing now?

Our mission is to help businesses to engage millennials. Millennials make up 50% of the Irish workforce, and in eight years, 75% of the workforce will be millennials. As Ireland approaches full employment, we’re seeing more and more companies struggling to attract and retain this talent pool.

We’ve developed and tested a programme over the last three years, which enables companies to engage millennials in a highly effective and successful manner. We have seen customers’ double millennial engagement, which is significant given that research shows that up to 70% of millennials are not engaged in the workplace.

How was the last 12 months, what worked well, what didn’t move as quickly as you would have liked?.

When I set up the company three years ago, no one understood the term millennial or that this generation needed different things workwise than previous generations. However, from personal experience I could see how a lack of understanding and management of millennials in companies was causing high attrition levels, low productivity and job hopping and I knew there was a solution I could provide.

The last 12 months have been very busy. We’re currently working with 12 large Irish-based indigenous and multinational companies providing them with training solutions to attract, engage, retain and best to manage this millennials.

What are your plans for the future?

We’ve seen a 50% increase in demand for our millennial training programme in the first three months of 2017. At the moment we’re focusing on continuing to deliver inter-generational programmes to large indigenous, and multi-national workplaces and universities. We are also developing new products and developing them into scalable in e-learning solutions with a view to expanding to overseas markets.

What will you be talking about at this event?

I will explain the following:

• Millennials are the fastest growing generation in the workforce, but their needs are very different to the generations that went before
• Over 50% of Irish employees are millennials. By 2025, millennials are expected to make up 75% of workforce. Companies need to adapt their programmes to engage and develop millennials and Generation Z (now starting to emerge into the workplace)
• Female millennials will represent 25% of global talent pool by 2025. Female millennials are distinctly different to the females from older generations. Inclusive cultures and distinct talent strategies are needed to capitalise in this huge segment of the workforce.
• 71% of millennial employees are not engaged by their work – the workplace of the future has to adapt to facilitate their preferred work styles, motivations and unique strengths (otherwise they will leave as they are a highly mobile group – FACT: Only 50% of millennials plan to be with their company one year from now)
• Millennials need flexible, technology rich working environments
• Companies need to develop millennial friendly programmes to engage millennials correctly
• Talk about how to make the future workplace attractive and conducive to high performance for multiple generations, i.e. flexible time, role and technology centred workstyles which will maximise the productivity of younger generations
• How to help millennials achieve a 50% increase in productivity and revenue
• Why it’s important to for companies to empower millennials now.

What inspired you to attend it?

EngageSmith has been talking about millennial empowerment for three years and this event is an opportunity to spread the message of how important it is to really engage the fastest growing generation in the workforce.

Which influencers and websites do you follow to keep up to date with the latest developments?

I’m plugged in all the time and I’m continuously reading millennial related news, studies and survey results from a lot of different websites. Irish Tech News is a great resource for the updates on what companies in the tech space are doing.

How can people find out more about what you are working on?

Our website is engagesmith.com, which has all the information on our products and my personal website is lisasmith.ie. I’m also on Instagram.

Anything else you’d like to add / we should have asked?

I’ve provided inter-generational training to 3,000 people to date. We’re focused on working with companies to future proof their training of millennials and gen z’ers by helping them to understand the workstyles which will maximise the productivity of younger generations.

If you would like to have your company featured in the Irish Tech News Business Showcase, get in contact with us at Simon@IrishTechNews.ie or on Twitter: @SimonCocking