We are just off the heels of a heated presidential campaign filled with email scandals and Twitter rants. People wanted to know everything. Why? Because we now live in a world where there's the expectation to be able to access all information.

But this was not always the case. When I first entered the professional working world in 1990, the environment was different. Organizational leaders were responsible for information, and they eked this out to employees on an as-needed basis. Information was not easily accessible like it is today, so there wasn't the demand to access it.

But transparency can be a scary concept for managers, especially those who now lead Millennials, the generation that doesn't know a world without cell phones, the internet or social media. In this issue of Promotional Consultant Today, we share three levels of transparency from Millennial expert Lindsey Pollak to help your organization, from Baby Boomers to Millennials, manage transparency.

TRANSPARENCY LEVEL: MILD The following tactics are easy to follow to begin to build a sense of transparency in your organization, especially among Millennials.

  • Let Millennials sit in on meetings and learn from veterans' interactions with clients or colleagues, and get that "behind-the-scenes" feeling they crave.

  • Hold a Town Hall to answer employees' questions.

  • Include more staff and department members on email chains to keep them in the loop.

Boosting transparency like this can improve confidence, knowledge and job performance.

TRANSPARENCY LEVEL: MEDIUM Focus on being a transparent manager by opening up to employees about career paths and how career decisions are made. How do people get those plum international assignments? What is the path to making partner? How do they move forward and upward in the company?

This allows people, especially Millennials, to feel like they are in control of their career path and their progress. When an employee doesn't know their future path, they often leave. However, in many cases, the boss had a plan for their future growth, but never communicated it to the employee.

TRANSPARENCY LEVEL: HIGH This is the level of full transparency, but what does that mean? In an organization, full transparency means sharing the numbers. Provide balance sheet updates on profit and loss. At my previous employer, the CEO disclosed a significant fine levied on the organization by the government and explained why we were fined. This level of transparency means being forthright about the good and the bad. It's the "What keeps our leaders up at night?" kind of transparency.

Pollak says that one of the hot practices at this level is salary transparency. This could mean sharing the ranges for different job levels. The idea is to show that compensation is fair and equitable. This is a somewhat new practice and not a majority of companies do it yet, but more are looking at this.

Different levels of transparency are right for different organizational cultures. Be a leader in your organization and push for a level of transparency that bridges the different generations in you workforce.

Source: Lindsey Pollak is a leading voice on Millennials in the workplace, trusted by global companies, universities, the world's top media outlets—and, most importantly, by Millennials themselves. A New York Times bestselling author, Pollak began her career as a dorm RA in college and has been mentoring Millennial—and explaining them to other