Q. Why are personalized experiences important?

A. Personalized experiences are the way that we make purchasing decisions today as consumers. And of course the younger the employee, the more likely it is that they grew up in a world of expecting a personalized experience that appeals to their unique needs and wants.

If you think about companies that do this very well, like Netflix or Spotify or even Amazon, we see companies who are successfully beating competition because they've been able to tap into what's most important to their consumer.

Q. How does this norm impact the workplace?

A. When you think about the workplace, you really have to understand how we see work differently so all people regardless of generation really want their work to mean something more than just a paycheck. And younger employees have been the most vocal about saying that they expect career to also have purpose.

So if you think about our consumer needs on personalized experiences, and you match that up against our expectations around career having a bigger meaning in life, we expect our career development to be a personalized experience as well.

Another unique factor that plays into how to appeal to personalized experiences in the workplace is that we're very pressed for time. The average employee is running from meeting to meeting, we're carrying a mobile device, we're answering emails, we're instant messaging, we really don't have a lot of time.

And so in order to do career development or just employee development well, companies have to really make sure that each experience that the employee is going to spend their time on, especially when it comes to development, is something that they see is very relevant to them, their own decisions, and specifically their own career path.

Q. What strategies can be used to meet this need?

A. If companies want to really appeal to the need for personalized experiences in the workplace, there's a few very simple strategies they can implement:

First is using personalized career-pathing software. There are some great partners out there that have technologies that will help your employees actually connect the dots between all of your systems and really appeal to where it is they want to go in their career.

Second, provide career development training based on a specific segment, so looking at your "early career" population and asking, what are their unique beliefs and their unique needs in career development and how do we have a program that's specifically for them, that's very unique to them?

And third is using 360-degree feedback assessments. Traditionally companies only give that to a very small percentage of the population, usually more experienced managers, and really there's an opportunity to put feedback tools in the hands of everybody. And making sure that even our youngest population has that opportunity to get that personal and customized feedback that's very relevant to what they're doing and their own personal growth.

Q. Why is face-to-face learning important?

Face-to-face learning is more important than ever. We are a society who's tethered to our mobile devices. We're touching our cell phone on average of about 9 times an hour. As a result, companies have invested billions of dollars into online and mobile learning tools in order to train and develop employees. But what that's resulted in is we've missed a really big key component of the development process, which is helping a new generation of employees address interpersonal communication skills.

Q. What's wrong with online learning?

A. Online learning does have its place in some organizations, but managers have been vocalizing for years how frustrated they've been with the lack of emotional intelligence from their youngest employees. Meanwhile, organizations have invested a lot of money teaching early career employees how to be better communicators and better leaders by looking at a screen.

Q. How can we course-correct?

A.Even if they've made big investments in online learning platforms and digital learning tools, organizations really need to pay attention to the research and the data as well as what their employees are telling them. Most employees, especially younger employees, report that they really want more face-to-face interaction when it comes to topics that are most important to them -- themselves. So when talking about someone's career development, their career path, their leadership skills, that's where companies have an opportunity to really look at strategies that are much more human-focused.

So, some of the strategies that I've seen that are working really well for companies are making sure that there are mentor programs  in place, even if they're informal programs or even peer-to-peer programs where there's another human being that's interacting.

Another great strategy is to make sure that we bring training back to the human side by bringing groups together at the same place at the same time and allowing that dialogue to happen naturally without technology.

Q. What's wrong with the current way we do employee development?

A. Most organizations have traditionally approached employee development by dedicating the majority of their resources and budget to high-potential leaders and managers overall. Now, although this is important, we do need to train managers how to lead, we're missing a really big opportunity.

Most managers, according to research, no matter how much we train them, will never be great career coaches. And, just pretend we waved a magic wand and they were all great at that, most simply just don't have the time to keep up with the demand of one-on-one meetings, career conversations, and feedback conversations that today's workforce really expects from their manager.

Q. What does it look like to "meet managers halfway"?

A. Imagine if your emerging professionals owned their career path, if they received feedback around where their natural strengths are and where maybe they had some blind spots, and they were prepared when meeting managers with an agenda and how to plan for what they wanted to really do in the organization. What would that be worth to your organization if you had that level of ownership and empowerment?

So the response simply is that we've got to provide development directly to emerging professionals. We have to put them in the driver's seat of their career so they can meet managers halfway.

Q. How do you do that?

A. The good news is that this is a really simple strategy to implement in companies. It's a simple solution. We simply have to carve out a program dedicated specifically to early career employees.

Q. How will the organization benefit?

A. If we implemented the simple strategy of meeting managers halfway, first off, your managers will thank you. Not only will you make their job a lot earlier and save them a lot of time, but you're also giving the resources and giving the time and the dedication to the population who's demanding it most from you. And that results in greater leadership bench strength, higher levels of engagement. And ultimately, you're going to hold onto talent long enough to get a real return on your investment.