Millennial Wants, Millennial Needs
Having just turned 20 and still identified as a millennial, I stand as a future driver of most organisations today. Being a millennial, I’ve learnt to see that we are set out to learn from the experienced and lead by example for the next generation. It’s an ongoing flow that essentially re-modernises the organisation to keep up with inevitable changes. A change that I grew up with that has now become a revolutionising phenomenon is the advancement of technology. It’s used in every workplace and has changed the way work is performed. It’s driven productivity and created efficiency. I for one understand that performance leads to results and rewards usually follow after. What’s better than being rewarded for what you’ve done?
An effect of technology incorporated in the modern workplace system has enabled HR companies to take advantage of the tech rise and change the way human capital can be managed. Simply, we call this creation HR Tech. With my time spent working in a company I’ve come to realise that being managed by not only great people, but with neat systems that coordinate it, it really impresses me to be engaged further. In a sense, it relieves my not-so-serious OCD senses. Having companies consisting of those of all ages, it’s used and managed by both employees of mature age as well as its future drivers – those of my age.
What distinguishes the millennial of today in the workplace with current mature aged workers are their differing perspectives. Having in mind that we use technology in our workplace, it’s seen as a challenging requisite to grow accustomed to for the aged for maintaining their job. As for the youth however, they’ve grown up with it being continuously fascinated by new exciting features. I too myself use exciting features as the basis of my enjoyment in using technology. With such a vast difference in why technological systems are drawn to by both generations, we can see that the demands for technology to keep up with “new exciting features” by the millennial to be one area of focus to keep them engaged. To keep people of my age engaged, you’ll see we thrive and perform at a more efficient speed.
Having drawn upon “new exciting features” as a prominent aspect to keeping youth on the edge with technology, these include the following:
- Links to social media
- Visual attractiveness
- Easy functions that get straight to the point
The rise of social media being a popular marketing tool also happens to be the most used amongst those aged 15-24. On average, the millennial takes up 9 hours of their day on social media (Anderson, 2015). If social media was to be part of technological functions at work, enjoyment by familiarisation will result. This enjoyment will adversely translate into performance and thus, proficiency. With these two products of enjoyment, we anticipate rewards by which we then repeat what we’ve done for more. It’s a two way relationship. Social media is one platform for retaining the millennials interest in workplace technology systems; however the focal point is what they see first upon using.
The youth of my age are very visual people. We like what attracts us and usually it’s the external appearance. Without having the right colour scheme or feel to your technological system, the common thought amongst us millennials would be “boring” and “bland”. These terms are usually associated with work and as a picky young individual, we tend to steer away from that. The push forward these days is towards “fun” which fosters for a great work environment. This is the main aim for a millennial – choosing “fun” as a job. Using attractiveness in the form of colour, quirky dimensions and imagery to engage the millennial is a starting point to retaining our interest and satisfaction in technological system use.
It’s a common thought amongst most people that no one wants to engage with what’s hard. Us millennials in particular look for shortcuts in most circumstances and are more prone to giving up when facing hard situations. In saying so, the urge for workplace technological systems to be easy is ideal. Being easy in addition to navigating us to a certain area we have requested to enter should direct us there. No re-directing nonsense functions. No confusion. No disengagement.
By engaging those of my age into the technological systems used in a workplace, you play upon what we want. Feeding our satisfaction that drives performance with rewards to advance your organisations’ overall performance is pivotal to seeing results. We all want results – it’s a given in business.
