How Millennial Workers Can Help Your Business & Vice Versa

How Millennial Workers Can Help Your Business & How You Can Empower Them to Do So

It’s our unofficial Millennials Month here at Designing Digitally, Inc. and we’re trumpeting the cause of celebrating these younger workers who are pouring into the workforce with zest, ideals, ideas and motivation. While there has been a lot of funny and irreverent content produced about millennial workers in the past few years (we found this rather hilarious satire on Millennials in the workplace on YouTube, the truth is that Millennials could not be emerging into the workplace at a better time in history. Of course, many social historians and their ilk will say that our past history is what has caused Millennials to emerge in the first place – technological innovation giving way to technologically savvy workers – but we want to just skip over the whole which-came-first, chicken-or-egg argument and get down to the basics on WHY millennial workers are good for your business and HOW you can help them to be even better.

For the record, Millennials are men, women and children who were born from the early years of the 1980s through the early years of the 2000s. This means that the millennial generation or Generation Y features individuals who are approximately 10 to 30 years old currently. Before them came Generation X, and before them came the Baby Boomers. Each “generation” or micro-generation has its own unique set of strengths and weaknesses and personality traits that can be loosely applied to the whole generation, although such generalizations are not hard and fast and don’t apply to everyone born within that time frame.

Millennials are often characterized as being less ambitious than their predecessors, more prone to isolation and introversion, and are also suspected of being less idealistic and participatory in making societal change happen. Some would say that the easy access to news 24/7, increased global awareness – particularly of the failures of governments to solve serious problems, and the difficulties with job growth in developed 1st World countries, have caused the millennial generation to be jaded and less optimistic and expectant of a better world. This remains to be seen, as most Millennials have yet to come to their full power as adults.

But Millennials also have some intrinsic advantages to every other generation currently working on the planet – namely, their comfort and expertise in working with technology. To set the stage for this idea, keep in mind that there are workers right now who entered the labor force before there was an Internet, PCs, cellular phones or other forms of mobile technology. Because of the “learning curve” involved with technology, and the cost to incorporate technologic innovation across the board in companies, some workers will just never get comfortable using the Internet, computers and mobile technology. They are “old-fashioned” and like it that way. Or rather, they were fashioned by the old.

But for Millennials, such technology has always been there! These men and women will be the ones who, like Prometheus bringing fire to mortals, will bring increasing innovation and new business applications to the workplace that will greatly increase efficiencies and improve business’ bottom line time and again.

How can smart executives and company owners leverage the technologic capabilities, intrinsic understanding and capacity of Millennials to use technology? One of the simplest and most efficient ways to begin this process is by inculcating E-Learning into training regimes within companies. Today’s new workers can be trained faster and more efficiently thanks to 3D training simulations, serious games and even mobile learning . Think of it – new employees who arrive for their first day of work and have already downloaded training documents onto their laptops or notebooks and completed lengthy HR forms. Imagine it – fresh workers who have accessed company E-Learning programs and practiced manufacturing protocols and processes using serious games. Do it – incorporate 3D training scenarios for workers who must execute complicated security practices in order to move about freely within complexes.

Millennial workers are here to stay. Empowering them with the tools they understand and the content you wish them to learn can only result in faster training times and quicker, more accurate work earlier in their careers. This will result in happier, more adjusted employees and smoother work operations for everyone involved. And that’s JUST the beginning of your relationship with your new millennial employees! For more information on this new generation workforce see http://www.designingdigitally.com