Companies need to meet digital natives’ needs
“A
good hockey player plays where the puck is, a great hockey player plays where
the puck is going to be.”
—
Wayne Gretsky, Ice hockey legend
The
question is whether organisations know where the puck is going to be in a
playing field full of digital natives.
It
has been argued in many forums over the last decade-and-a-half that
millennials, often called digital natives because they started learning after
the beginning of the digital information boom, see the world in a different
way. Across the globe, millennials today constitute a third of the workforce,
and by 2020, this number is poised to cross the halfway mark. If reports are to
be believed, by 2025 it is estimated that 75 per cent of the employee base will
comprise of millennials, and they may have their greatest impact on the
workplace.
This
makes it imperative for the organisation to adapt their processes to cater to
these digital natives. While individuals from older generations recall
interacting with each other without mobile devices, computers or the web,
digital natives have been using these technologies since their early years.
While older employees head to the coffee machine, the digital native prefers to
catch up with his/her Facebook and Twitter feed. They are the same, but
different from the previous generations.
A
typical 20-something entering the workforce today has, on average, spent over
5,000 hours playing video games, exchanged over a quarter million emails, IMs
and texts, in addition to over thousands of hours spent online and on their
cellphones. The ‘Digital by Default’ generation is able to comprehend
tremendous volumes of information, due to having innovations like the Internet
and social media integrated into their lives from childhood. This leads to a
compulsive need to stay online.
Digital
natives infuse changes in the way workplaces operate, so as to create an
environment conducive to a generation adept at incorporating technology in
their professional and personal lives. Inherently collaborative, flexible and
connected, digital natives have unique communication styles and demand
workplace platforms and policies that feed their digital diet. Understanding
that digital natives have internalised a childhood of video gaming,
organisations are leveraging platforms that gamify the employee experience. By
providing instant gratification and responsive feedback, organisations are able
to encourage adoption of conventionally tedious company tools and policies.
Millennials
tend to view time as a valuable currency and don’t believe in the typical
notion of 9-5 desk jobs. They would rather make the most of the
technology-enabled workplace that allows for flexible, remote working, and new
methods of collaboration via video conferencing and internal social networks.
Fundamentally, they are keen to get their jobs done efficiently in order to
maintain a healthy work/life balance.
Concurring
with the adage that most employees have better technology at home over the
workplace, enterprises have embraced BYOD/BYOT (Bring Your Own
Devices/Technology) policies. Organisations, however, will require to go beyond
BYOD and enable a complete digital workplace, with virtualised applications,
auto-synchronised collaboration and file-sharing systems, intuitive search
tools, personal dashboards with analytics to monitor their performance and
progress. Internal collaboration and lightweight communication applications
will make e-mails redundant.
Word-of-mouth
plays a vital role in influencing millennials, and unlike their older
counterparts, they research organisations before joining them. This will lead
companies to adopt employee advocacy tools to help empower employees become
evangelists for the organisation, building the brand, attracting talent, and
presenting a personal face for the organisation.
The
21st century enterprise has to be prepared for this paradigm shift, with the
new breed of digital natives gaining prominence in the workforce. Rather than
resist, those organisations that embrace the new reality and learn to harness
these technophiles and their inherent ability to collaborate, connect and
create will thrive in this era of disruption in the business landscape. To do
so would require organisational commitment by fostering digital natives with
the right mix of platforms, policies and technology.
Source | The Hindu
| 19 April 2016
Regards
Pralhad Jadhav
Senior Manager @ Library
Khaitan & Co
Upcoming Event | National Conference on
Future Librarianship: Innovation for Excellence (NCFL 2016) during April 22-23,
2016.
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