Taking Advantage of a Digital Native Workforce

By Matt Brennan

There is a generation of employees becoming involved in the workplace who grew up with technology playing a significant role in their personal life, and in their education. They are not only comfortable with that technology but expect it to be part of the workplace environment. If your company is holding on to more traditional views of technology, it may be time to make some updates and take advantage of what a younger generation of workers can offer.

Below are some of the steps your company can take to take advantage of a strong digital native workforce.

Encourage Good Ideas from Everywhere

Social media networks implicitly encourage conversation and the spread of ideas from the bottom up. They offer a distinct opposite to a more traditional, hierarchical approach. The youngest generation of workers grew up with social media present through every aspect of their lives.

Social media networks provide the groundwork to encourage and foster new ideas. These ideas can be of great benefit to your business. If your company still operates on a more hierarchical approach, it may be time to shift and find ways to encourage new ideas. Involving social media in the workplace can make your youngest employees feel more welcome.

View Change from a Results-Oriented Perspective

To an employee with a more traditional mindset, seeing a colleague constantly on their cell phone during work hours may be problematic. Receiving texts outside the normal work hours may feel off-putting. But this is where it’s necessary to consider overall results. The employee on their cell phone may be handling customer service issues as they arise. What looks like succumbing to distraction may actually be enhanced productivity.

The Cloud and Mobility

Cloud computing is nothing new for young employees. They’ve been using the cloud to store music and photos for a long time, and they are growing to expect that capability from an employer.

A transition to the cloud and mobile apps allows workers to do their job from anywhere. This can allow for more flexibility, and the ability to find effective methods for communicating. It also changes what we think of as the workplace and can provide the infrastructure for a work from home arrangement.

This is an increasingly important arrangement for younger workers and can offer an incentive for workers to remain loyal into the future.

Establishing the Right Tools

Companies need to implement the right set of tools to allow workers this extended connectivity and flexibility. There are a host of SaaS platforms available looking at all aspects of today’s workplace needs.

Applications like Slack, Trello, or Basecamp are establishing their own means of connectivity. They offer a way to fight back against inner-office silos and make information more readily accessible on all fronts.

Attracting the Best Talent

The key to long-term success for any company is the ability to attract the best talent of tomorrow. The way to do that is through making the workplace appealing to a younger generation of digital native employees. Are you doing everything you can to make your culture and environment as inviting as possible?