For many employees, it's a bad thing to be summoned to the boss' office.

But the young professionals who comprise the so-called Generation Y want to be invited to stop in and converse regularly about their assignments and how their jobs fit into the company's strategic goals.

Encouraging input can help stem the staff turnover rate that is common among workers in their 20s.

"The stories we hear from company to company are that those employees are only there a short time, and they quit," said West End-based consultant Buddy Hobart, who focuses a significant part of his business on helping companies retain young, talented employees.

Traditional management strategies of giving new workers low-priority tasks and increasing their responsibility over the years doesn't work well with Generation Y -- about 70 million people born between 1977 and 1997. "To them, it's all about meaningful work. They want what they do to matter," Mr. Hobart said. "When they feel it doesn't matter or is being taken for granted, they'll look elsewhere. They won't take on minor, throw-away assignments just because somebody said so and work 80 hours."

While baby boomers -- and generations before them -- signed on to jobs "fully expecting I might be here the rest of my life," Gen Y workers accept new jobs with the idea they'll test the waters for a year or so and then look at options, Mr. Hobart said.

"Gen Y looks at [employment] as a one-, two- or three-year lease, while baby boomer managers think they may be buying the employee," he said.

In a daylong seminar Wednesday, Mr. Hobart will team with Herb Sendek, men's head basketball coach at Arizona State University and a Penn Hills native, to help business leaders learn how to attract and retain Gen Y workers. The men also are collaborating on a book about recruiting Gen Y employees.

"The reality is that the baby boomers are so used to, by their sheer numbers, driving the market and they've been at the wheel so long that it's very difficult to realize that it's now someone else's turn," said Mr. Hobart. "They need to shift the culture and embrace team building and collaboration, improve communication skills and adapt to how they embrace and motivate Gen Y."

While these young workers have a strong work ethic, he said, they want a sense of how their job impacts the company's long-range, strategic plan.

Mr. Hobart met Mr. Sendek when both attended Carnegie Mellon University in the late 1970s and early 1980s. They kept in touch and reconnected when Mr. Hobart's company, Solutions 21, opened an office in Phoenix. Their discussions often turned to how to retain young talent.

"[Coach Sendek's] job is to recruit and retain this exact demographic. Then he develops them. … He must build a culture, deal with strong egos, create teamwork [and] get older players to train and support younger players who want to take their places and produce a winning team every year," Mr. Hobart said.

Managers can apply some of the coach's tips to business. While some companies attempt to lure young workers with "fun" staff activities, such as a volleyball league or regularly scheduled happy hours, Mr. Hobart believes that those methods actually don't work well toward retaining employees.

"They're a nice distraction. It's really nice, and people appreciate it; but they want to know, 'Are you communicating with me and respecting my intelligence, and does what I do matter?' "

For more information or to register for next week's seminar at the Embassy Suites Pittsburgh in Coraopolis, call 1-866-765-2121 and ask for the conference coordinator.