Millennials: How to Adapt, Embrace and Foster this Dynamic New Workforce

For many of the more traditional baby boomers and older generations, today’s workforce is almost unrecognisable. Business has been redefined from the core, driven by the shift from delivering a customer centric to an employee centric experience. Our millennials come under a lot of fire for being the drivers causing this huge transformation.

As employers, we once held the trump cards with the promise of higher salaries or flashier job titles being sufficient to command the best talent. But as it stands, to retain existing talent and attract new talent, our people’s priorities must evolve to focus on growth, purpose and transparency. 

As business leaders, we must improve our workforce's digital dexterity and nurture an internal culture from the bottom up in order to remain competitive.

TRANSFORMATION HAS BEEN IN OUR DNA SINCE DAY ONE

Over the past 20 years, as Digital Transformakers, we have helped a wide array of global companies to transition to the new digital age. As a Pure Player in our industry, we understand that we must lead the way of digital transformation to improve business outcomes and the role of digital in the workplace.

Of the 1,600 new people Devoteam is expected to hire in 2019, sixty percent will be millennials, a large portion of which will be new graduates, so we feel well-versed to weigh in on the ‘millennial topic’.

As Business and IT leaders in charge of a robust digital workplace program, we continuously strive to understand how millennials’ technology-driven work experiences differ from those of their older colleagues.

UNDERSTANDING THE MILLENIALS’ MINDSET

We must address millennials not just as a generational challenge, but as a newly formed mindset. 

In most cases, millennials have evolved with unfettered access to technology in a society hardwired by ultra-consumerism and unconstrained gratification. So, it is not surprising that they are coming to the workplace with customers’ expectations idealised in qualitative experiences. 

Millennials value their EQ as much as their IQ, their personal lives as much as their career, and more importantly, they expect a strong sense of meaning and purpose from those bound to become their leaders.

But let’s not make the easy mistake to categorise them as being entitled, self-interested, unfocused or lazy, as contrary to popular belief we have found that millennials are as engaged as their older colleagues, if they recognise themselves in their employer’s core values.

HOW CAN THE DIGITAL WORKPLACE PROMOTE AN AGILE MILLENNIAL’S ENVIRONMENT?

Collaboration

From their formative years and throughout their education, millennials have been encouraged to tap into the power of the collective. The rise of social media has only affirmed and extended their collaborative mindsets into the virtual world.

As leaders, we should recognise that ultimately our younger employees are after validation, feedback and direction from their more experienced colleagues, mentors and leaders.

Developing a digital workplace and deploying global platforms for employees across the organisation to communicate, store, share and collaborate digitally will go far in attracting and retaining a millennial workforce.

Technology 

Tech-dependency is probably the factor that makes millennials the most unique generation. Millennials can rapidly master new tools and processes; they no longer ask for better technology in the workplace, they expect it!

As millennials are mandating a new bottom-up culture, your company’s IT must follow the same democratic direction.

Give your millennial workforce the cutting-edge technology they need to innovate and allow them to evolve with interfaces and tools they favour such as social networking, messaging formats or BYOD and BYOA policies and programs.

Experience

Enabling employees to give their best, motivated by the global organisation’s goals remains as important as ever, however, a well-crafted engagement strategy may not be enough for millennials. 

The overall well-being of your employees is bringing engagement into the experience realm.

As Leigh Buchanon writes in Meet the Millennials, “One of the characteristics of millennials, besides the fact that they are masters of digital communication, is that they are primed to do well by doing good.”

And thus, millennials are interested in feedback, but not in the traditional sense. They want to understand the impact of their contributions and they want to know it now. They want this feedback to be constructive and the ability to grow and exceed expectations. 

As business leaders focused on competitivity, to recruit and retain top talent, we must consider millennials and adapt our working processes. Rethinking the digital workplace is of paramount importance. All things considered, factoring the millennial mindset into an organisation's approach benefits the organisation as a whole, providing an opportunity to those more advanced or established in their careers to consider new ways of working and adapt accordingly. Indeed, ‘adapt’ is the operative word and the ability of a business and its workforce to alter its approach as needed is a keystone to success.