Second Prize: Engaged staff, increased retention, teamwork and trust.

First Prize: A long-term, company-wide culture of awareness of the importance of respecting and protecting corporate information. Employee-driven emphasis on its role in trust-based business relationships, legal obligations to business partners, competitive advantage etc.

In CPS’s Managing Millennials workshop, we suggest many ways to give your Generation Ys some variety in their work, to engage their interest and loyalty, and to offer some outlet for their creative minds, as they focus on routine tasks. Most of these suggestions leverage their technological and generational-specific skills, for the well-being of the organization.

We have recently added another interesting task. Please consider adding it to your list.

Large amounts of proprietary information, including details of prospective contracts and other material that falls into the area of “stuff that shouldn’t be out there” is getting onto the web through blogging, social networking and other breaches of privacy.

Let us assume:

1) that you have trained your Generation Ys, as covered in the workshop, on privacy guidelines and confidentiality.

2) that you are working towards a collaborative and trust-based relationship with your people, because you know the business need for this and the bottom-line values of engagement and retention.

3) that you know the size of the threat of the web-based privacy problem and the numbers involved (look at things like www.websense.com)

You could take a Big Brother approach to protecting your valuable information, and sign up with an information monitoring service. You could take a collaborative, team-based approach and rotate the task amongst your GenYs and GenXs. This will a) get the job done, b) give them some fun, varied tasks (and you know what that’s worth!) and c) create a deep and lasting culture of awareness of the importance of protecting corporate information. And culture change is always the first prize.

It’s not hard to do. [Remember that other generations might be interested - do not exclude them, especially if you are a small enough organization.]

• Call a meeting (remember that pizza!) or send out an email (using E-writing, people…  not 20th century Composition 101!)
• Present the problem of information security, and some information about what various companies are doing about it.
• Put your people into groups or a group to discuss approaches. (You know the drill – a time limit or 24 hours to email group leader and 24 more for the synthesized group responses).
• Take feedback and let them map most of the plan. Review your Marshall Goldsmith rules, and don’t hijack the project because you know more than them. Don’t let them run amok – provide clear guidelines like time off the main job for any one person.
• The end product must have clear objectives and metrics, clear time frames, and must be high on direction, with strong structure from a good executor. No fuzzy edges, no dependence on a “big vision with minimal direction.” The whole thing must run on a system, with short goal spans, not on people remembering things. The check-ins, check-ups and assessments must all be put in the system at the very beginning.
• Encourage your team towards continuous improvement, and ownership of the project. A Ning-based or intra-net based discussion forum for the team (with senior management on the group) would be a great idea.
• Remember to give feedback to your praise-hungry young talent. And any other generations involved. Remember? You said you kinda also like feedback, and you enjoy being praised too!

Let CPS know how you’re doing Glynis