Is Your Network Ready for a Millennial Influx?

As technology has changed, so has the way people work and connect. We often see a blend of old and new technology, as fully embracing new tech can be costly up front. That slow move forward has worked for many. But as Millennials, people born from 1981-2000, flood the workplace, a new mindset is forming.  One that means getting ahead of the curve to gain a competitive edge. What does it mean for you?

A future workforce study conducted by Intel and Dell gives us these insights:

• 80% of millennials cited workplace tech as a deciding factor for taking a job
• 44% of employees feel their workplace isn’t smart enough
• If workplace technology isn’t up to their standard, 42% would be willing to leave the company
• More than 50% of the 4,000 employees polled (millennial and otherwise) expect to work in a smart office within five years

Younger Millennial workers have been raised on technology. They have never known a world without computers, emails, texting, constant interconnection.  Forty-six percent of the people polled say the biggest time-wasters are tech related: administrative tasks, slow or glitchy software, and slow or glitchy devices. So how can your business attract and prepare for this new generation of employees?

Increased mobility. Millennials have a greater emphasis on work-life balance than those before them. Giving them the ability to work from home and from the office on the same devices appeals to them.  It is also believed to increase productivity if they can work, at least partially, on their own schedule.  Establishing a BYOD-enabled environment, along with strict policies regarding device use, can be a great draw to the younger workforce.

Increased connectivity. While your staff may be working from all over the place, they need the tools to help them connect seamlessly. Video conferencing and SMS options are crucial.  Millennials have a strong sense of collaboration, but don’t feel that in-person communication is necessary to enable that.  Unified Communications create the ideal environment for millennial workers.

Robust network ability. To appeal to the new recruits, your network needs to be able to handle video, and a lot of it. It is a medium that is growing in leaps and bounds, and it is a major bandwidth hog. You need a network that can handle a huge data load readily, with little loss of quality.

Why do you want to change how things work for this new group instead of telling them how ‘we do things already’? Because the benefit of all these features they want can outweigh the drawbacks.  These new technologies, like cloud computing, increase your scalability, redundancy, security and mobility which in turn increases your productivity and your profit. You become more appealing to a generation of workers that place high personal value on their work because they are more satisfied with the balance in their life.

If you want to learn how your network is performing and what you can do to prepare for the new workforce, contact the network experts at Corporate Technologies Group today. We can help you build a network that will support your growing business.

Want to learn more about networks and what you can do to improve yours? Read the eBook, written by our own Brett Harney, Perfecting Network Performance.