Organizational Learning Support Preferences Of Millennials: An Interpretive Study

Given that more than $170 Billion is invested annually on employee learning and development in the U.S (American Society for Training and Development, 2011) it is important that training leads to improved job performance. In any organization, workers require new knowledge and skills to become productive and maintain performance over time. Millennials, who comprise the latest employee generation, are age 18-34 (Tyler, 2007) and share the same performance requirements and expectations of the generations that precede them in the workforce. The organizational learning supports to help millennials improve their learning in the workplace remain largely undefined. For the purposes of this research effort, organizational learning supports are the tools and resources provided by an organization to promote knowledge transfer. To efficiently and effectively meet the learning goals set forth for millennials in workplace settings, scholars must research, and learning practitioners must consider the organizational learning supports that millennials prefer for learning. This study utilized an interpretative qualitative design (Merriam, 2002), that uncovered the experiences millennials had with organizational learning supports to understand which supports they prefer. Data was analyzed inductively using a constant-comparative method and yielded three themes: (a) millennials appreciate big-picture understanding, new information, and rapid application to help them learn and perform on the job, (b) millennials prefer having the option to learn independently or in small groups to deepen their understanding of new knowledge, and (c) millennials want resources that provide answers to questions that fill knowledge gaps