Guest Blog: Dr. Tony Zipple

Finding ways to engage employees is important to every organization. Employee engagement predicts employee retention, productivity, customer satisfaction, and the company’s bottom line. In an era of intense competition for talent, attracting, developing, and retaining the best staff is an important part of almost every company’s strategic plan.

Increasingly, companies who want to succeed need to pay particular attention to new strategies for engaging millennial workers as well as Generation X and Generation Z employees. While every worker wants to be in a supportive workplace, younger workers have different higher expectations for workplace quality and, on average, more significant histories of stress and trauma. 

KentuckianaWorks, Kentucky Youth Advocates (Bounce Coalition), Metro United Way, Goodwill  Kentucky, and Blueprint 502 have come together to launch an exciting new pilot curriculum designed to meet the challenge of making the workplace work for both employers and young employees..

The Spark Series: Igniting Compassionate Leadership to Retain the Next Generation is an eight-hour training sequence designed to give managers evidence-based tools for engaging and retaining these young workers. The series was built using the best current research, as well as, insights from focus groups of employers and young employees. 

The Spark series helps managers do four things:

  • Learn trauma-informed principles tailored for managing young adult employees
  • Build stronger relationships and improve team communication  
  • Increase retention and engagement among younger workers  
  • Gain tools that support a healthier, more resilient workplace culture 

The Spark Series consists of four sessions, each about two hours long. Sessions include a presentation about the importance of the topic and relevant management strategies, opportunities to practice the strategies, and a chance for participants to share ideas about implementing new management ideas.

The Spark series is currently being piloted with employers from a range of companies and industries. On the basis of these initial pilots, the training will be modified and a final training kit including PowerPoint slides and trainers manual will be available for distribution.