THE FUTURE OF THE MILLENNIAL WORKSPACE

Isolated spaces, waiting rooms, bulky filing cabinets and boring cafeterias are left in the 80’s and 90’s along with Coca-Cola clothing, floppy discs and The Oregon Trail.

We have become an adaptable culture that no longer requires set hours, confined spaces or one place to work from. It’s all about flexibility, shared spaces (and stationery) and collaboration.

Although most companies have allocated areas within their buildings to operate as ‘hot desks’ and ‘chill’ spaces. These ensure more collaboration, transparency, creativity, productivity and innovation.

Not only is the physical workspace adapting to this generation, but so are company cultures. Millennials will choose a corporate culture and meaningful work above everything else. Working from home will be the norm, collaboration via wiki’s, social networks and other technologies to share ideas and innovate are their preference.

In the future, Millennials will recruit based on results over degrees – good news! A recent Forbes Leadership article stated: “companies are starting to review your online presence over your resume and start-ups care more about work ethic and experience over education. Millennials care more about what you achieve than your education level”.

The overall view of the future of Millennials and the workspace is open office layouts that better accommodate group work activity, generations being inclusive in terms of understanding both workflow needs and personal needs of employees and buy-in from generation Y – resulting in a successful outcome.