The Millennial Workforce: Changing the Future of the Workplace

Can one generation truly make such a big difference in the business world? Absolutely!

Millennials are quickly becoming the largest generation in the workforce. According to Dan Schawbel (Forbes, 2013)³, “by 2025, Millennials will account for 75% of the global workforce”. Compared to the Gen X’ers and Baby Boomers, Millennials go into the workforce with different work and culture expectations. They expect transparency, collaboration, a great company culture and tech innovations. One of the many differences between Millennials and other workforce generations is that they grew up with technology. Therefore, they:

• Are technologically savvy
• Push for innovation
• Are well adapted to change
• Are used to having information accessible to them at all times
• Prefer video conferencing and chat rather than face-to-face meetings and phone calls
• Are used to instant gratification and feedback

Unemployed Millennials vs. Working Millennials

Many pre-conceived notions of Millennials in the past have been: spoiled, attention-seekers, lazy, unmotivated, impatient (expect to have everything right NOW). However, as workers in the business environment, they are none of these things. They simply bring a new dynamic to companies; perhaps a dynamic that has been very much needed, such as flexible work schedules, working from home, a fun company culture with emphasis on team spirit, great benefits and perks.

What do Millennials expect?

• They expect transparency; they do not believe only top management should be privileged to certain information. Making information more visible at a company will allow more people to make better decisions.
• They expect to work with efficient systems that are adaptable and flexible. They understand and value the power of technology.
• They expect to have access to visualizations to analyze business performance at a moment’s notice. Yearly business performance reviews don’t cut it for them. They want to constantly learn and get the right feedback on how the company is doing in order to keep finding ways to improve.
• They expect to be able to work from home and on a flexible schedule; they want to eliminate commute times and have productive workdays.
• They expect to work as a team; collaboration is huge for this generation. No matter if they are working from home or at the office, they embrace video conferencing and chat platforms (rather than face-to-face meetings and phone calls).

Time to Upgrade your IT Solutions

It’s time organizations adapt to these changes and understand the positive aspects these Millennials are bringing to the business world. Companies need to begin implementing the right integrated management system (affordable, flexible ERP solutions like ErpWizard), Business Intelligence tools for analytics, Chat platforms like Slack, Mobile business applications and much more. It’s important to discuss with an IT consultant what your business may be lacking and to speak with all your employees, even those young Millennials, to see what solutions they may be missing in order to be as productive and efficient as possible.