The Rise of the Millennial Workforce

It shouldn’t come as a surprise as it’s been on the horizon for years, but are businesses truly prepared for the rise of millennials in the workplace? The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that by 2015 millennials will overtake the majority representation of the workforce and by 2030 this hyper-connected, tech savvy generation will make up 75% of the workforce.

This new wave of people coming through office doors near you are not just tech literate and use vpn, but accustomed to being connected anywhere, at any time. They’re a generation that can’t recall life before the Internet, they’ve always had a cell phone, they share their photos via Instagram and communicate with friends and family via Facebook and Twitter. Thanks to the rise of mobile, cloud and social, millennials are used to flexibility, openness and instantly connecting with people regardless of their location. What they’re not used to are constraints and being restricted by an IT department when it comes to using technology.

Having grown up with technology at their fingertips, millennials won’t put up with poor enterprise technology. Legacy systems that have been rolled out by businesses, more often than not, mirror the hierarchical structure of traditional organizations, which the millennial generation simply won’t stand for. Rather than being able to communicate, share and work on files and content with everyone involved in a project, they could find themselves working in silos. Knowledge is trapped on people’s desktops and in their inboxes and, while there may be communication across departments, working with colleagues beyond the firewall – whether customers, contractors or partners — could be their biggest challenge. Our Enterprise Information Landscape study revealed that, while the following scenarios were frustrating for all age groups of offices workers, those aged 18 – 24 and 25 -31 were far more vexed:

• Wasting time searching for documents: 28% of the total sample base found this frustrating versus 38% of 18 – 24 year olds;
• Figuring out who has specific information about a project or task: 17% of the total sample base compared to 33% of 18-24 year olds;
• Trying to find my co-workers contact details: 10% versus 24% of 18–24-year-olds, and 14% of 25-31-year-olds.

All of the above issues can be solved by effective technology services. But the generational split in the workplace doesn’t stop at general frustrations with poor ICT systems. Millennials are a generation that will seek to solve problems themselves and if they’re not satisfied with the technology being offered to them, they’ll find something else to use. While 16% of office workers use Dropbox to store work documents, this rises to 31% of 18 – 24 year olds and 24% of 25 – 31 year olds. 22% of both age groups also use Google Drive and 29% of 18 – 24 year olds use iCloud.

So what’s the answer? Clearly, IT restrictions are put in place by enterprises for many reasons — the primary one being security risks. But, as these tech savvy younger workers take up their roles in organizations across the globe, there needs to be a balance between maintaining security measures and control over corporate data and enabling people to get their jobs done quickly and efficiently. There are now innovative enterprise-grade cloud technologies out there that enable effective communication and collaboration. These tools not only meet the IT department’s strict security requirements, but also the usability demands of millennials.

By providing intuitive and easy to use services to office workers, enterprises avoid the issue of workers purchasing and using alternative technologies under the IT department’s radar, which leaves organizations wide open to the risk of security breaches and data leaks. Yes, it may be daunting for businesses, but deploying tools that encourage open collaboration and idea sharing across and between organizations will be vital for attracting and maintaining the brightest sparks of this generation. This is a set of workers that wants to share their creativity, ideas and knowledge with others, as well as learn from those around them, so knowledge has to flow seamlessly across boundaries. No one enjoys playing telephone tag with colleagues or waiting for emails and attachments to hit their inboxes.

And then there’s mobile and remote working. This is a generation that doesn’t switch off. They will check their emails and connect with colleagues at weekends so they need to have the right technology in place to support them. Enterprises need to consider how to rise to the BYOD challenge as tablets and smartphones are never far away from their millennial owners. This is something I’ll look at in greater depth in my next post, but a key piece of advice for organizations bracing themselves for the millennial invasion is: listen and learn. If someone recommends a new tool that they think would improve working practices, increase productivity and make office life a little easier, consider whether deployment is viable. Millennials live and breathe technology and they may be able to teach their managers a thing or two.

Alastair Mitchell is co-founder and CEO of Huddle.com.