What HR Can Do to Keep Millennial Employees

What HR Can Do to Keep Millennial Employees from Heading for the Exits in 2019

For the past two years, we’ve heard endless metrics describing a great job market. Unemployment is down. Job creation has been consistently strong. The labor market is the tightest it’s been in a decade. And yet despite all that, there’s still a good chance that a significant number of employees at your company will think about leaving their positions this year.

While a good economy might be good for business, it can be less than great for employee tenure. Last December, nearly 3.5 million workers in the U.S. quit their jobs. That keeps pace with the 2.4 percent of workers who quit between July and September 2018 – the fastest rate of Americans quitting their jobs since 2001. In a market as strong as the one we see now, opportunities that pay more, offer better benefits and reduce commute times are too attractive for many mid- and entry-level employees to pass up. If employees don’t feel obligated by economic circumstances to stay in one place, they’ll be more willing to look at other places to work.

This is especially true for Millennials, who are three times more likely than all previous generations to switch jobs regularly. A Glassdoor survey released in 2017 found that as many as 66 percent of working millennials will leave their current employment by 2020. A Deloitte study last year pegged that number at 43 percent.
At the same time Millennials are weighing job hopping, they’re also staring at $1 trillion in student loans. Not only is that more student debt than any other generation, but it also outweighs any other kinds of debt (like mortgages) that Millennials have accrued. And therein lies one crucial incentive for Millennials to either change jobs or stay put – depending on what their employer is offering on that front.

Student loan repayment provides a unique, stabilizing force for younger workers

The 2018 Deloitte survey highlighted the growth of the gig economy as an attractive alternative option for Millennial workers; 62 percent said they saw the gig economy as a viable, alternate route in lieu of full-time employment, and 57 percent of junior employees said they’d be interested in taking on short-term work over full-time employment. At the same time, the study also highlighted Millennial workers’ drive to know what financial benefits they can expect for staying in the long run with an employer as a key area that companies can build their retention strategy on.

Student loan repayment services tick off both of these boxes.

By providing a new workplace incentive for contributing to their employees’ student loan debt, employers can:

• Better stand out from the crowd of other companies that may be tempting their workers away with different benefits packages
• Demonstrate a long-term financial incentive for millennial employees to stay in one place
• And, offer a measure of stability that a more unpredictable gig economy job cannot.

Are you an HR professional looking for new ways to benefit your employees and differentiate your company from the competition? Vault’s student loan repayment service offers a cost-effective workplace benefit that can improve employee recruitment and retention. Contact sales@vault.co to learn more.

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