Your Meeting Guide for the New Wave of Young Professionals

Getting to Know the Millennial Generation

Meetings and email communication is a part of the everyday life for today’s professionals. They are important for conveying new ideas, getting everyone on the same page and moving forward on projects. Having open and effective communication can help coworkers and companies to become more successful and work together as one unit. This article will discuss the preferences of the next up and coming generation of professionals and giving insight to how to effectively communicate with them. Millennials like to be catered to, providing ground transportation is key to that lifestyle.

Know Your Audience

Knowing your audience is an important piece of giving a presentation or having a general meeting. The main goal for almost any speaker is to get your point across while holding everyone’s attention. Your meeting or presentation should be based on your audience age level and sometimes profession. For example, if you are presenting to audio/visual or media professionals than you should focus on the media aspects of your presentation with speaking points to support it. Not saying that the rest of us deserve a cut and dry speech, but tailoring to each audience shows that you took the time to take their needs into consideration.

Millennial What?

The millennial generation is what researchers are naming the next wave of industry professionals. A grant study compiled of 2,000 participants and 78 questions help to define the preferred communication styles of the millennial generation. What the Millennial Generation Prefers in their Meetings, Conventions and Events explores the preferences of 18-30 year olds in the workforce (Fenich, Scott-Hasell, Ogbeide, 2012, p.2.) This new wave of professionals has new work ethic styles compared to those of previous generations. From the study, the millennial generation was broken down into three age brackets, 18-20, 21-24 and 25-30 year olds.

The four main goals of the study according to Fenich, Scott-Hasell and Ogbeide (2012) was to analyze the following:

“(1) their personal preferences and expectations when attending meetings and events, (2) their individual attributes as related to meetings and events, (3) their motivations to attend meetings and events, and (4) their preferred methods of communication.” (p.2)

The study analyzed the results based on the Likert scale of 1-5 with 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest.

Communication Preferences

Based on the results found by Fenich, Scott-Hasell and Ogbeide (2012):

18-20 year olds prefer structured meetings that are continuous so that the meeting flow is not interrupted and to save time. This age group also likes to communicate over Facebook, Twitter and texting as opposed to emails.
21-24 year olds enjoy teambuilding with their fellow staff members. Keynote speakers and engaging presentations also appeal to them. For example, having a talk-show format presentation or question and answer.
25-30 year olds likes being mentally challenged, enjoys peer to peer discussions and online communication, such as Skype and Go to Meeting.
Out of the main social media portals; Linked In was least preferred by the 18-20 year old age group, while Twitter was marked least by 25-30 year olds (Fenich, Scott-Hasell, Ogbeide, 2012, p.5.)
Most preferred communication for all three was face to face communication.
Interactive presentations with integrated technology are most appealing for all age groups.
New term of the day: “edutainment,” which combines education and entertainment (Fenich, Scott-Hasell, Ogbeide, 2012, p.6.) The millennial generation is looking for short concise meetings that include media highlights and an entertaining presentation.

Works Cited: Fenich, G. G., Scott-Hasell, S., & Ogbeide, G. (2012, May). What the millennial generation prefers in their meetings, conventions and events. Retrieved April 4, 2013, from pcma.org.

Posted on February 27th, 2018 in Corporate Travel & Advice, Useful Tips.