MediaPace : Setting the pace for business-to-business dialogue

Digital Natives vs. Digital Immigrants

Today, Gen. Y is the fastest-growing segment of the workforce, expanding from 14% of the workforce in 2004 to 21% today, or nearly 32 million workers.

Applicant pools are larger today than ever before as more people pursue higher levels of education and are therefore better qualified for professional careers. However, due to technological advances (particularly in medicine), baby boomers are living (healthily) much longer. That means the workforce is packed with individuals from different walks of life, all striving for gradual advancement and stability.

Digital technology is changing not only the way we receive information, but also how we create. With Millennials having the “home-team advantage,” having grown up with technology, generational discord may become a problem. However, a team that successfully and respectfully meshes can reap great rewards.

Statistics show that, today:

• More than 60% of employers say they are experiencing tension between employees from different generations.
• More than 70% of older employees are dismissive of younger workers’ abilities.
• Nearly half of employers say that younger employees are dismissive of the abilities of their older co-workers.

Research study “Intelligent Dialogue: Millennials” says that “These digital natives grew up using digital technology, and they’re often acting as guides for digital immigrants – people who entered the digital world as adults. Digital immigrants like their information delivered in a linear, logical sequence, but digital natives prefer random access to hyperlinked information.”

This information says a lot about where professionals from each generation are coming from and what you can expect them to bring to the work table. Don’t forget that Millennials grew up in the decade when Time magazine named the computer its Person of the Year. This era has been marked with digital technology breakthroughs that have became mainstream as Blackberries, iPhones, iPods and digital cameras have all become an important part of everyday life.

Ultimately, the goal for any staff is to achieve balance in roles and responsibilities. What I have personally experienced is that teams are most successful when a synergy happens between priceless wisdom, experience, fresh creative energy, ideas and invincibility. Everyone is also much happier in the process. When this fails to happen, generational clashes – direct and indirect – can and do often occur. To not capitalize on the strengths of a multi-generational (or even multi-ethnic/gender for that matter) staff is to cheat your organization out of the best production possible.

Some advice to consider:

“Older managers should not be afraid to show a more affable side to their employees. This will allow their young talent to be comfortable in contributing to the team from the very beginning. A younger employee who can feel a certain sense of comfort around his or her older managers is happier and ultimately more productive, while still respecting the manager’s position and authority.”
- Keya Rahnemoon, Intern, State University of New York – Binghamton, “Intelligent Dialogue: Millennials.”

“They [Millennials] combine the teamwork ethic of the Boomers with the can-do attitude of the Veterans and the technological savvy of the X-ers. At first glance, and even at second glance, [Millennials] may be the ideal workforce – and ideal citizens.”

- Ron Zemke, Claire Raines, and Bob Filipczak from “Generations at Work.”

Posted by Samantha Sims

Meet the Millennials: We Come in (Digital) Peace

USA Today says: “They’re young, smart, brash. They may wear flip-flops to the office and/or listen to iPods at their desks. They want to work, but they don’t want work to be their life.”

In case you haven’t been introduced, meet your new workforce, the “Millennials.” They include about 70 million Americans born between 1977 and 2002 (and usually, it’s a narrower gap of those ages 16-27). What’s so special about this new generation of employees is that they’ve enjoyed the luxuries of digital technology throughout their entire lives.

Cathy O’Neill, SVP at career management company Lee Hecht Harrison, adds that “the millennium generation has been brought up in the most child-centered generation ever. They’ve been programmed and nurtured. Their expectations are different.”  For Millennials, our needs, wants, skills, interactions, sociability and expectations are all different from previous generations. We’re the first generation of digital multi-taskers, able to juggle e-mail, files/ documents, music and videos all with one hand (and a phone). We’re tech-savvy, high-performing and high-maintenance.

FreshMinds Talent, in partnership with Management Today, surveyed more than 1,000 people in a study entitled “Work 2.0.” It suggests that Millennials are generally more ambitious, more brand conscious and tend to move jobs more often than ever before. More than any previous generation, today's young professionals are plugged in 24/7 with a world of communication and information at their fingertips. Their great expectations come from million-dollar success stories that have transformed a lifetime of paper-pushing cubicle work into digital technology innovators.

Millennials live, eat and breathe digital and have already begun to push the limits of technology, an asset for any company forging into the future. If you don’t mind the occasional “cool” being tossed around in office work chatter, IM bubbles popping up over Excel spreadsheets or funky, dancing iPod speaker robots on desktops, we Millennials will definitely return a high yield.

Interesting Facts about Millennials:

They spend a lot of time at the gym
More than 1/3 of 18-25-year olds have at least one tattoo
30% have a piercing in places besides earlobes

*In their recent book, Reynol Junco and Jeanna Mastrodicasa found that, of 7,705 U.S. college students:

97% own a computer
94% own a cell phone
76% use Instant Messaging
15% of IM users are logged on 24/7
34% use Web sites as their primary source of news
28% own a blog and 44% read blogs
49% download music using peer-to-peer file sharing
75% of college students have a Facebook account
60% own some type of portable music and/or video device such as an iPod

Other terms for Millennial:

Generation Now: has been used as well to reflect the urge for instant-gratification that technology has imparted
Computer Generation
Generation D (for "Digital")
Generation M (for Millennium or Multi-Task)
Net Gen, a shortened form of "Net Generation" (similar to the related term "Net Natives")

Posted by Samantha Sims