Sometimes it’s just more fun to be bad.

Too bad that doesn’t apply when you’re running the show, expecting your young employees to follow your lead to the promised land of profit. Next time you’re looking for a quick summary of the things top Gen Y performers avoid in their employers, look no further than the seven deadly sins.

1. Wrath

The days of yelling and screaming in the profitable workplace are long gone. Sure, you can yell and scream, and, sure, you can find some people who will tolerate it. But the people who will put up with that will never be the top performers your less bombastic competitors are hiring and retaining.

2. Avarice

AKA: Greed. If the only thing you’ve ever wanted out of your business, your life, and your employees is more money at the expense of anything resembling morality or a work-life balance, you’re not going to get far. This generation doesn’t describe “corporate responsibility” as an oxymoron; it calls it a requirement.

3. Lust

Lust is a sin because you’re valuing someone’s appearance over who they actually are. The overriding principle that one’s substance is more important than his surface is a staple of the Gen Y mindset. And don’t make the mistake of limiting this principle to its sexual connotation; it applies to clothing, piercings, hair-cuts, or any of the entire range of ways a people can modify their appearances.

4. Vanity

Pride goeth before a fall. And fall your business will if you don’t allow your Gen Y employees to keep themselves motivated by applying new methods to old processes or getting hands-on in the decision-making processes. So swallow the pride that tells you that the old was is the best way and test it, regardless of how unwilling your employees are to make that same concession about their new ways.

5. Envy

You sometimes hear people call this one “nostalgia.” Pretty much any story you hear that begins “Back in my day…” is a perfect example. Times have changed. Things are different. You think we have it easier than you did. We know. Instead of dwelling on the differences, adapt to them and enjoy it a bit. You just might find that the “good old days” left a little something to be desired, even if things still aren’t perfect.

6. Sloth

Remember that one employee you hired who had a passion for Shakespeare? No…? What about the one who played guitar in a rock band? Still not ringing any bells…? I know you’re busy and I know that running a business is an involved process, but if you don’t take the time and energy to get to know your employees and build relationships with them, there are plenty of Gen Y employees who will argue that your managerial style would be greatly improved by staying at home in bed.

7. Gluttony

Gluttons over-indulge themselves to the point that something that was once good for them now works to their detriment. All too often, managers and the people running companies institute policy after policy and checklist after checklist, knowing that a strategic approach to business can be a good thing. But as the checklists and checklists-for-checklists pile up like cholesterol in an artery, they clog the flow of business and eventually choke its livelihood. All the while, your Gen Y employees watch the disaster unfold, frustrated that no one listens to their pleas for the business to be run according to its necessities, rather than its checklists.

Lately, news has been interesting regarding social media in the sports world.

For instance:

• The NFL has recently finished a social media policy that prohibits players from using Twitter during games.
• The International Tennis Association banned players from using Twitter to discuss their on-court activity during the US Open.
• The NBA is reportedly working on a social media policy.

So, what does this have to do with the young employees you’re managing?

It’s simple: you’re watching these organizations deal with some of the same problems you’re dealing with. NFL players enter the draft at around age 22 or 23. NBA players can enter the draft after a single year of school. LeBron James was playing in the NBA before I had graduated from college. Up-and-coming tennis players can be very young.

And while one might demand a higher level of professionalism and maturity from people earning multi-millions of dollars than from first-time workers earning eight or ten bucks an hour, anyone who has seen Terrel Owens, Chad Ochocinco, or Brandon Marshall knows that this isn’t the case.

These guys, amongst others, have been case studies in entitled talent, which is a problem front-line managers across the nation are dealing with.

If nothing else, this news tells you that you can take comfort in knowing that you aren’t the only one who is facing these problems.

Then take note of the ways that these organizations deal with their problem children. Look for both the positive and the negative lessons. What did the Patriots do that the Raiders didn’t to make Randy Moss behave? How will the NBA’s players receive the new social networking policy?

Let the big leagues be the testing grounds for some of the policies you’re kicking around. Best part: you can do your research by watching Sports Center.

Marketing to young people can teach you valuable lessons about managing Millennials.

Which Wich, a quick casual sandwich concept has a very cool offer here in Colorado. If you take a picture of yourself and a Which Wich bag on top of one of Colorado’s 54 peaks that is 14,000 feet or higher and bring that picture into Which Wich, you get a free sandwich.

Like this.

Now, in addition to being a very cool word-of-mouth marketing tactic (I heard about the plan from a couple of climbers on the top of Torrey’s Peak), I think that this could be a very effective model for managers looking to build relationships with their Generation Y employees.

Imagine that you put up an “Employee Achievement” bulletin board in back. Each period (week, month, quarter, etc.), your employees can bring in a picture of themselves accomplishing something impressive, and you can hook them up with something cool and post the picture.

Off hand, four things I would consider impressive:

• Climbing a mountain
• Swimming with a dolphin
• Accepting a scholarship
• Building a house for Habitat for Humanity

Now, not only are you celebrating what your employees do, you’re getting to know who they are. You’re learning about their interests, their hobbies, and their passions. You’ll be tapping into the same impulse that drives employees to post pictures on Facebook, and you don’t even need an internet connection to do it.

(I’ve seen something like this in the back of my local REI, and that’s a company that for 12 years running has been rated as one of Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For.)

To really take it to the next level, once per period, snap and print a photo of an employee doing something awesome at work and put that on the Achievement Board to recognize their performance at work.

If you ask me, that beats the hell out of “Employee of the Month.”

I was lucky enough to attend a Rockies game and a Broncos game last week, and it got me thinking. You see, the simple truth of every sport is that defense wins championships. If you can’t field a team with a good defense, your time on the field isn’t going to get you anywhere.

So, what does this mean when you’re employing Millennials?

It means that you have to be able to defend your practices to them so that you can win their hearts. Because make no mistake about it: those practices will be under constant attack from an offense that has spent its whole life sharpening its wits to abuse, question, and disregard the procedures you have in place. (Just ask any manager I’ve ever worked for.)

Four excellent defenses for any procedure:

1. Following this procedure will make the young employee more money.

The appeal of this one is easy to see. Sometimes, though, the hard part is drawing a direct line between the three cents of cheese that are saved by using the correct portioning tool and the raise an employee might receive in the future if food cost isn’t too high. Two ways to make that line easier to see: 1. Immediate fiscal gains for following procedure (i.e., gift cards, cash, etc.) 2. Long-term rewards for over-all performance. Set up a prize or some sort of reward that is contingent upon the business’s performance.

2. Following this procedure is the right thing to do.

Generation Y doesn’t just come to the workforce looking to put some cash in their pockets - they want to do it on their own terms. I had a friend who worked in sales for a major national retailer. He was good, and was consistently able to sell extended warranties on products. Despite having the ability to have a similar success with applications for the company’s credit cards, he only got two applications in his entire time there. When I asked why, he said, “I didn’t think it was right to suggest a card with such a high interest rate to people.” So, as a manager looking to get him to work on credit applications, you’d have to do a few things: explain how it’s the right thing to do (it avoids anti-discrimination lawsuits, for instance), that the people who are applying for the card have the information available to them, and that it’s the right thing to do to let them make their decisions instead of him making the decision for them.

3. Following this procedure is easier/more effective than other ways out there.

Speak from your experience. Share times that you tried it a different way and ended up with hours of extra work because of the unforeseen consequences. This one can be particularly convincing coming from a peer instead of a supervisor.

4. Following this procedure is going to better prepare you for your future.

Sure, learning the new program doesn’t look like very much fun, and the old one worked perfectly well. But when businesses adopt new technologies, they typically aren’t the only business doing it. Learning to cope with change is just one a small part of this defense - learning new technologies and their applications is the real meat of it.

I’d love to hear about any others you’ve used in the comments!

My last post got some great comments - I encourage you to give them a read. I was a little surprised, though, that no one bit on my (theoretically) provocative question of

If you don’t reward your employees for doing something, are you telling your Gen Y employees that the value of that task was zero?

We’ve got a pretty cool group out there. I had expected to at least see the word “entitled” make an appearance. But it didn’t, which suggests that maybe my expectations of the managers and supervisors out there need a little adjusting.

That said, my view on this particular question is that you run the danger of creating the “zero value perception” when you aren’t clear in the delivery of your rewards. Certainly, there exists a perception that Generation Y needs a cookie just for showing up on time, but you will ultimately set the norms in your workplace. If your employees learn that rewards are for going the extra mile, they’ll value them. The problem comes when they think that showing up on time is going an extra mile. When you hire new employees, establish clear expectations and tie those to their pay very explicitly. You’re paying these people X dollars/hour, and you should make sure that they know that money is the reward for meeting the bare minimum standards. I might go so far as to use a written “employment contract” that makes this painfully clear.

I’ll write one of these tonight and post a .pdf of what I imagine tomorrow.

People Report tweeted today that 65% of all the companies they survey use gift cards to recognize and reward hourly employees. So, if you’re in the 2/3 of employers doing this, congratulations! Obviously you’re on to something.

But just as with any reward program, if you’re not doing it right, gift cards are just going to be a waste of your resources. Remember: the purpose of any reward program isn’t to make your top performers feel good - it’s to make sure that they continue to perform well, and to motivate others to perform well.

Here are a couple questions I think you should ask about that gift card you’re about to give an employee as a reward to make sure that you’re getting ROI on the gift cards:

Is this gift card to somewhere the employee will want to spend it?

It’s hard to choose gift cards that will please everyone. In fact, common wisdom holds that you can’t please all the people all the time. My advice here: DON”T TRY TO DO THAT. Instead, pick a few different, more specific gift cards, so when your Chipotle junkie wins you a customer for life, he can have a burrito instead of five bucks to the nearest big box.

Is this gift card’s value in line with what the employee did?

A friend of mine once joined a stranger to drag a drowning woman out of her car after she crashed it into a ditch. She later sent him them both checks for $200. He said to me, “I never knew you could put a value on a human life. Apparently hers was worth $400.” When you put a value on a given task by providing a reward for it, your Millennials will do the math. Make sure that the value you communicate to your employees is the value you want them to place on a given task.

A related question I’d like you to consider here:

If you don’t reward your employees for doing something, are you telling your Gen Y employees that the value of that task was zero?

I’ll share my thoughts on this with a post Wednesday, but think about it, and share your thoughts in the comments section!

I recall being at the bar with friends once, and we saw the bartender - a guy maybe a couple years older than me - making repeated trips to the jukebox with his tips. For most of the night, he was calling the shots on what we were listening to, on his own dime.

Now, if you’re this employee’s manager, how easy is it to think of something that will keep him around at this point? How many different ways are there to leverage this employee’s love for music so that you can get him to give you his best?

• If he comes in to cover a shift, or he’s having a bad night, why not load the jukebox up with a five spot to let him know you appreciate his work?

• Maybe can give him some credits in the jukebox for every shift he works. (This is a double perk because it leaves extra money in his pocket, too.)

• If you can, turn off the jukebox and let him choose a radio station. He’ll have trouble quitting because he can’t find another job where he can choose the music.

Just because your Generation Y employees value work/life balance doesn’t mean that you can’t bring a bit of their life into work to make things happen.

In my last post, I asked readers to share how they would try to motivate me to do a task I find incredibly boring and tedious. Apparently finding ways to get me to work isn’t tedious - I got some incredibly insightful responses:

• One reader challenged me to improve upon the process - if possible by leveraging new technology - to really demonstrate my great qualities to managers.

• One reader suggested that I teach myself to make the best of it. After all, there will always be unappealing tasks in life, and perhaps this is as good of a time as any to learn how to get through them.

• Another proposed that we make a tedious process of sorting through clothes to look for ink tags exciting by providing rewards for locating certain tags, thus encouraging both excitement and attention to detail.

• One e-mail I received aimed to shift my outlook from “What does this audit do for me?” to “By doing this audit, how am I helping my friends at work?”

So, right there, you’ve got four different ways to encourage an employee to get involved and committed to a boring task. Which one would work best to begin motivating some of your young employees?

My huge thanks to everyone who took time to register a comment or send an e-mail!

Rather than telling you what to do, I’d like to take some time today to ask you what to do. There is ample talent, insight, and managerial skill in this audience, and I’d like to put it to work.

I work in retail loss prevention, and one of the tasks we are required to do on a monthly basis is an ink tag audit. Ink tags, for those who aren’t familiar with them, are the long pieces of plastic that are stuck through items of clothing. They are difficult to remove without damaging or ruining the clothing (due to ink inside), and thus provide a deterrent to theft. The auditing process involves hitting the sales floor and counting hundreds of items of clothing to insure that we are up to standard.

I did one ink tag audit, and it was one too many. It’s a task that I will avoid ever doing again for any reason. It’s boring and time consuming. And that would be fine if I could picture some sort of benefit that doing ink tag audits would confer upon me in the future. But I can’t think of a single benefit. I don’t anticipate a future in retail loss prevention, I’m already comfortable with my ability to count to 100 and beyond, and I’m comfortable with my ability to understand and execute a standard (when I want to).

So, readers, here is the challenge:

How would you get me to care about an ink tag audit if you were going to ask me to do one? What would you do to try to relate it to my world, to my goals, or to my immediate benefit?

Leave comments with your responses, and I’ll be highlighting the most insightful responses in my next post!

I’m sitting in the Gen Why offices on a sunny afternoon as I type this, drafting a document on providing feedback to teenagers, but right now I need a break. So, rather than continuing to think about the Teenage Feedback Report Card we’re working on, I wanted to write about something else: music.

I’m a huge music fan. When I work at the office, I listen to mp3s on my laptop. When I drive, I listen to mixed CDs that  I have slaved over. When I workout, I listen to my iPod. When I read in bed at night, I put on the stereo. Silence bothers me. And while I may be an extreme case, I know that music is an important part of life for most people found in my age bracket.

So, today, I wanted to take a quick look at a couple songs, and the lessons that those songs taught me about my bosses.

The song: “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” by Guns ‘N Roses.

(I know that this is originally a Bob Dylan song, by the way, but we were listening to Axl sing it.)

The experience: My boss came into the back of the house while I was washing dishes, shut the stereo off, and took it away because he was so sick of Axl “murdering a Dylan classic.” About ten minutes later, he came in, plugged the stereo back in, and apologized for being childish.

The lesson: I was initially pretty upset. After all, I was the one in the back of the house slaving over the sanitizer, so the way I saw it, I should be the one choosing the tunes. At first, I thought I was going to learn that my boss was  a jerk. When he came in to apologize, though, I learned that he was willing to do the right thing, even if it took him a few minutes. I ended learning a bit more about him because I saw him react to something that I’m also passionate about. He doesn’t get any points for style, but I commend him for being willing to share something about himself with his employees.

The song: “Ninja Rap” by Vanilla Ice

The experience: At my retail loss prevention job, we straight-up love the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. How much so? Well, in our office, we’ve got a white board with pictures of each of us drawn up as a ninja turtle and our statistics listed next to our turtle drawings. (I’m Michelangelo, if you’re wondering.) In spite of this light-hearted take on our jobs - or perhaps because of it - we’ve been excelling this year. We’ve held the traveling trophy for being the best store in the district for two months straight. So it seemed only natural one day when our boss downloaded “Ninja Rap” and we began dancing in the office to celebrate our performance.

The lesson: Two distinct lessons here: First, I find the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles highly motivational. They were a major part of the pop culture landscape of my childhood, and so it just makes sense to want to be more like one. Might not hold for my entire generation, but most guys my age are likely more into the Ninja Turtles than you’d think. Second, our relationship with our manager is excellent; he knows what would motivate and reward us. Think about this: with a $0.99 download from the iTunes store, he was able to provide an extremely cool reward to the entire office.