Hiring and retaining the transient Millennial Singaporean

They are coined as the “strawberry generation”. Many businesses will no doubt have a group of young part-timers who augment their core team of full-timers, especially in the services and retail industry. And employers are lamenting about hiring such Millennials. Born between late-1980s to late 1990s, this generation of workers are described as upwardly mobile, fickle minded, hard to motivate and God knows how to retain them.

So how do we hire and retain such young workers, given their rising contribution numbers in the workforce and are especially critical to many businesses? And how does a start-up win the war for such workers over more established organisations?

Millennials for hire. Courtesy of Joie.

I spoke to Derrick Teo, founder of Joie, and Wayne Soh, founder of Properhands. Both founders are experienced hands when it comes to hiring Millennials. It is even more challenging for their businesses, given their job roles they offer are not glamourous in nature. Joie is a start-up that crowdsources 8,000 part-time casual student labour for hospitality, f&b and retail businesses while ProperHands is a start-up that provides home and office cleaning by crowdsourcing freelance cleaners to customers. Both use smartphone apps to handle the intricacies of the operations.

Pay them well and better be quick about it

Pay is still the utmost factor for Millennials. In the age of instant gratification, they expect a faster pay day so that they can spend it as quickly as they earn it. “Millennial part-timers are now expecting to be paid every 2 weeks, rather than monthly,” noted Derrick. “If you don’t meet that requirement, they will likely not be working for you the next round. Here in Singapore, government regulations require a 20% deduction from the pay to be placed into the CPF (or 401k equivalent). We are now seeing businesses willing to absorb that cost so that Millennials are willing to continue working for them.” In fact, Joie is trying to break the barrier and trying to achieve payment of salaries by the next day.

Wayne agrees with this assessment. “At Properhands, to first attract Millennials, we have offered pay that is 30% higher than the average norms. We also had to factor in the issue that our projects pay an average of 3 hours per time, as compared to other part-time jobs of 4-hours and above.” Like Joie, payment cycles need to be fast. Pay comes weekly now, but if ever there’s a delay, you will hear Millennials complain and some even try to boycott and threaten not to continue.

It has to be fun

Once that is out of the way, it has to be fun. Joie, whose founders did a survey of 200 teenagers ages 15 to 19, found out that they wanted interesting rewards like bubble tea, hotel buffets to cinema movie memorabilia. So they included a rewards system, where Joie has a spin-the-wheel option where the staff gets to be rewarded for a chance to win an overseas trip.

“We also noticed that Millennials who are friends like to work together, as a form of keeping each other company and having quality time together,” noted Derrick. “That gives them the motivation to work together.” It becomes an advantage as when they supply banquet waiters to the hotels which require 10-15 each time.

During the interview session, Joie determines what interests does the Millennials like to do and tries to align them accordingly. “We had a Millennial who loves watching movies, so we placed her at Cathay Cineplexes. Her reward is receiving movie memorabilia which makes it a fun place for her to be in.”

Give me a reason to work happy

When it comes to purpose, Millennials don’t just do a job for a job. They want to know that they are contributing positively and know the reason for their scope of work. Millennials received a lot of care and concern by their parents, as compared to previous generations. Likewise, they need to be carefully nurtured in the workplace, unlike the previous generations. “Based on experience, it is the work environment and how the supervisor treat their part timers. The manager must treat them well and fair. Even though they are part timers, if they feel that they are treasured, their propensity to stay with you will increased greatly,” observes Derrick. “After all, we are interacting with people and people tends to want attention to feel good and we should constantly engage the youth or compliment them if they do well in their jobs.”

Do all these factors get Millennials to stay on?

For Properhands, regardless of age group, having very strict standards and filtering out poor attitudes is a must from the start. “We interview every cleaner, brief them, and test them. If out on a job they do badly or don’t turn up, we quickly remove them from the roster. This is very important as the cleaner is the key touch point for the customer and just one bad experience is enough for a customer to not trust the brand,” Wayne explains. He would rather turn down a deal if he cannot trust the freelancer cleaner will do her job.

Over at Joie, the frequency of no-show has dropped for its clients. But realistically, despite the best efforts, no-shows still happen for the less committed Millennials. Derrick believes that mindsets and culture in Singapore need to change. Derrick notes this, “In western countries, it is typical for the youth to earn their own money during studying at tertiary institutions, be it being a cashier at the supermarket, or a sales assistant at the retail store. But this is not built into our youths here where there is no need to earn money, given that they receive much from their parents. Institutions and the government should consider encouraging the young to understand the priceless value of working and better educate them on proper work values.”

With the significant shrinking of foreign labour to fill up the front line of industries in Singapore, who knows one day youths may be called up for National Service to augment the supply to keep the nation operating. It would be wise for employers to start understanding this generation of workers to give them an ease of mind in operations.

Special thanks to Derrick and Wayne for their contributions to this article. Do connect with them on their experiences. Both Joie and Properhands are investees of Tri5 Ventures.