Today’s young work force is virtually all part of the Millennial Generation, also known as Gen Y or digital natives. This is a generation that is comfortable collaborating on social networks, and because of this, they expect their organization to provide collaboration tools and a highly “social” environment. Consequently, those organizations that have adopted these new collaboration tools are expected to see better productivity from their Gen Y employees. This slideshow features five ways identified by Virtusa, a global IT consulting and services firm, in which enterprises can leverage present-day social collaboration technologies to successfully and productively engage with the Millennial Generation.
Click through for five ways to successfully and productively engage with the Millennial Generation, as identified by Narasing Rao Akula, technology head – CEM Practice at Virtusa.
Deploy a social collaboration platform for Millennials to share their views, comments, audio and videos: A social collaboration platform like Yammer or Confluence provides an environment and a platform to enable Millennials across the organization to collaborate. Such platforms enable quick communication via discussion forums, instant chats, etc. Employees can form communities to help with enterprise initiatives and share insights similar to how they would via their own personal social networks.
Gamify collaboration platforms to encourage healthy competition and better participation: Once a collaboration platform is deployed, gamification should be implemented to increase engagement and participation levels. Success should be celebrated and badges and gifts should be given to top contributors. For example, Virtusa employs a video-game like dashboard where employees can track their progress against their goals and one another. This turns achieving goals into a competitive game that recognizes and awards top performers.
Implement a BYOD (bring your own device) policy in your organization: Millennials have been dubbed the “hyper connected organization” and more often than not are on their smartphone or tablet. Having BYOD policies will encourage Millennials to use their devices to connect to the company’s network in a safe and secure way. This, in turn, greatly increases the productivity of this group (or any employee). With BYOD, employees can access enterprise information from smart mobile devices, enabling them to participate in discussions 24/7.
Listen to Millennials on collaboration platforms, analyze the data and change support systems/policies to better fit them: Enterprises can enable social monitoring and listening to effectively analyze the social data consumed and shared by Millennials. Based on the findings of the analysis, HR or support system policies can be tailored to fit the needs of the Millennials. For example, if Millennials work better at different hours, flex time can and should be proposed.
Transform your infrastructure in a way that is similar to cloud, which gives services on demand without delay: Millennials are used to things moving quickly, and one of the key asks by Millennials is the speed of fulfillment. If infrastructure and technology within the company is very slow, the company should consider upgrading that technology, particularly moving it to the cloud. This will “modernize” the infrastructure, allowing organizations to use it on the go and reap all of the other benefits the cloud has to offer.
In this day and age, when it comes to Millennials, the three keys are social, mobile and cloud. By adopting social, mobile and cloud technologies, companies can better engage with Millennial employees and improve competition and collaboration among employees overall.
