Getting the most from millennials: three steps to help you with younger coworkers.

• Author: Zabriskie, Kate
• Position: TOOLBOX - Column

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What was she thinking wearing that to work today? This is the legislature, not a night club! How does he not know to bring a notebook and a pen to a committee meeting? Do I have to tell him everything? What would make her think it was OK to party with lobbyists until 3 a.m.? Doesn't she understand boundaries? Can you believe he wanted a raise already? Unbelievable!

If you have new hires fresh out of school, or interns who are still in school, some of these observations may have a familiar ring. Are these new employees just bad hires? Probably not.

Rather, the source of such surprises more likely has to do with training (or the lack of it) related to workplace expectations. Before you say, "But they should know," don't waste your breath. Maybe they should know, but they don't. Young, freshly minted employees or interns don't know much about the workplace because most of them haven't been in it that long.

Think about it: If the shoe were on the other foot and you found yourself in some kind of "Freaky Friday" role reversal, would you totally understand today's high school or college social codes? Dream on, and good luck with that!

As someone with more experience than the people you hire, you have a responsibility to get them off to a good start. You can short-circuit many of the problems people encounter when working with new, young staffers if you follow these three steps.

1 Get to Know Them

Of course, millennials are not all alike, nor do they all exhibit the same behaviors and values. But generally--as a generation--they share some characteristics that define them and differentiate them from older generations.

Born between 1982 and 2004 and raised in an era when parents often treated their kids like friends, more than a few millennials still live at home and don't plan on leaving soon. Many had to borrow money for college, and may have student-loan debts that are similar to some home mortgages. That doesn't mean, however, that they're clueless about life outside the nest. But their financial circumstances are probably very different from those previous generations knew at the same age.

These young people also grew up surrounded by ever-present technology in an era of instant answers. You may have had an Atari or Nintendo, but they had Google. They are multitaskers who are used to being able to find all kinds of information quickly and who find social media and texting hard to resist.

With parents as buddies and...