Technology & tools in the millennial workplace
A discussion on technology and tools in the workplace will be remiss, if we do not discuss where it will have the biggest impact and who we need them for. So, employees, customers or the shareholders - who is most important to an organization? Most successful business leaders will tell you - employees!!! When you treat your employees well, they treat your customers right and your organization grows, which in turn make your shareholders happy. Richard Branson has been preaching this for years. In a similar mindset, Satya Nadella has transformed the Microsoft culture and business model and its thriving.
It goes without saying, that attracting and retaining great employees are crucial to the success of any organization. Today’s workforce is predominantly made up of millennials and Gen Xer's, and you need to know what’s important to them. To get a deeper understanding of what this means, lets first define these groups.
The Center for Generational Kinetics defines a generation as a “group of people born around the same time and raised around the same place”. The “place” is an important distinction as it defines the environment that influenced them during their growth. (This differs from urban to rural settings and from developed to emerging markets - a discussion for another day). The US Bureau of Labor Statistics broadly categorizes the US workforce into 4 generations:
- Gen Z / Centennials: Born between 1996 – TBD. (Under 23) – 19 million
- Millennials / Gen Y: Born 1977 – 1995 (24 – 42 yrs) – 67 million
- Gen X: Born 1965 – 1976 (43 – 54 yrs) – 32 million
- Baby Boomers: Born 1946 – 1964 (55 – 73 yrs) – 35 million
An astounding 77% of the workforce are Gen X or younger. Hence, understanding the “place” that these generations have grown up from a technology standpoint is important.
- 1975 - 1981: Microsoft founded and shortly after Apple and the IBM PC
- 1994: Amazon founded
- 1998: Google founded
- 2004 – 2010: Various social media sites … Facebook, Youtube, WhatsApp, Instagram.
- 2007: Iphone invented
- 2008 - 2010: AirBnB, Uber and Wework
These technologies are without a doubt redefining how we live, get around and work. Every one of these technologies provide a simple tool with a simple interface to enable people accomplish a basic task better. They have in the process disrupted many large institutional traditional business models. This is what the current workforce has grown up with and expect in their workplace. The concept of “ease of doing business” goes beyond your customers interaction with your organization to how your employees get their work done, which will be reflected in your customers experience.
If you are running a large corporation or a small business with antiquated tools and processes, it’s important for you to realize that simple tools are being developed that will redefine how your work is accomplished. Employees will leave to organizations that adopt these tools and will in turn further redefine the business models.
So, what should you do?
- Evaluate your current business processes (customer and employee) and identify how it could be made simpler. Do not try to boil the ocean – tackle the most crucial business process and build from there.
- Stay focused on your core business and partner with an agile process simplification provider that might already have a canned solution. Do not try to over customize the solution – remember to keep it simple.
- If you must create a custom solution, partner with an agile provider comprising of technology and industry business experts that have intrinsic knowledge of your industry to develop simple solutions – Be warned that this will be expensive and could slow you down in the future.
- The larger the organization, the bigger the need to find an agile organization that can redefine and simplify your processes.
I cannot overemphasize the “simple” nature of your solutions.
What's been your experience with millennials and if you are a millennial, what do you care about? I'd love to hear about it in the comments.