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Talent Management
How to Enhance the Career Self Efficacy
of South African Millennials
The primary job of a line manager is to unlock the talent in his or her team to optimise every member’s contribution towards organisational goals BY: BRIDGET DE VILLIERS AND CHRISTELLE ROBERTSON
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ith retirement age extending well into the seventies and Millennials being a dominant factor in the workplace, people management is a balancing act, given diverse needs of a multi-generational team. To say that the South African workplace is challenging is an understatement. As if that were not enough, the reality of globalisation and technological advancement makes continuous change and development the new normal. This has resulted from the integration of numerous technologies leading to artificial intelligence, online teaching, cloud data, robotics, virtualisation and smart devices. Boundaryless markets and global competition adds to this complexity, resulting in less secure work and the need for employees to manage their own careers and personal progress. Employees and managers alike are challenged by this rate of transformation and the necessity to rapidly adjust to evolving work environments. Millennials (born between 1980 and 1994, and currently between 26 and 40 years) will represent 75 percent of the global workforce by 2025. It is therefore important to learn more about this generation to ensure that they succeed and flourish in the workplace while contributing towards organisational objectives. All employees need to be independent, self-directed and selfreliant to succeed at work. At the same time, employees require strong communication and interpersonal skills to deal with the pressure and uncertainty that characterises the 21st century workplace. Further, in order to survive and thrive in this environment, employees need to possess high levels of career self-efficacy. Career self-efficacy is described as an employee’s belief in his/her capability to complete
PEOPLE DYNAMICS | March - April 2020
specific tasks in order to achieve set goals. Having a high sense of self-efficacy increases the effort and perseverance that an employee has towards challenging tasks, thereby increasing the possibility that tasks will be successfully completed. Considering the rising prevalence of millennials in the workplace and the importance of career self-efficacy in the 21st century, the career selfefficacy of South African millennials was explored in a study conducted by Christelle Robertson, while being a Masters’ student within the Faculty of Business and Economic Sciences at the Nelson Mandela University. The rationale behind the study was that an understanding of the factors that enhance their career self-efficacy allows managers and millennials alike to leverage these factors and thus enable millennials to withstand and thrive in the volatile, uncertain, challenging and ambiguous 21st century workplace. The study took the form of semi-structured one-on-one interviews held with millennials. Gathering data in this manner allowed for the identification of themes or factors seen to promote career self-efficacy. In the study it emerged that the factors that millennials themselves perceived to exert the greatest influence on their career self-efficacy were growing conversations, studying and/or training, and performing meaningful work that was seen to be purposeful and significant, with each of these factors being underpinned by encouraging relationships. Millennials found growing conversations with their managers empowering in approaching tasks. Growing conversations are described as “in the moment”, continuous coaching conversations that focus on learning from mistakes and failures through developing strengths to build capacity These conversations were seen as empowering as they allowed the millennials to know exactly what was expected from them, what the measurements for success were, what time-frame they had in which to achieve a specific goal, and how to improve their performance if they made a mistake. Even if these conversations were not overtly positive, the millennials still reported that they took the learning to heart as it assisted them in exploring alternative strategies to success. These conversations were not seen as one-off activities occurring when correction was required, but rather as a continuous engagement that took place at regular intervals. This continuous engagement strengthened the millennials’ perseverance and increased their dedication towards achieving set goals. The second factor found to promote career self-efficacy was that of studying and/or receiving training. Millennials stated that they
