Executives are failing to adapt to internet generation

Companies are not using talents of 'millennial' workers, writes Gabrielle Monaghan.

Irish executives are not adapting to the emergence of a new generation of young workers who have grown up with the internet. As a result, organisations are losing out on technology-driven increases in productivity, new research shows.

A study commissioned by Xerox found that college- educated workers born after 1980 - dubbed "the millennials" - are forcing the pace of change in the workplace in Ireland and the rest of Europe.

The millennials are talented at sourcing information from the internet, multi-tasking, and communicating via instant messaging. Therefore they need collaborative technology tools that will help them work faster and work more productively with their colleagues, according to Forrester Consulting, which surveyed 1,250 executives from 16 European countries for Xerox.

"The millennials will drive a revolution in the way products and services are chosen, developed and procured," said Penny Rhodes, general manager of Xerox Ireland, 500 of whose employees belong to this generation.

"Organisations need to start embracing the millennial way of working in order to keep up with the way their customers and partners want to do business."

Sixty per cent of European workers under 26 are online daily, 25 per cent use chat rooms regularly and 51 per cent use an instant messenger, the study found.

In addition, 59 per cent of them rely on the Internet when looking for jobs, compared to just 23 per cent of all workers.

This age-group makes up 15 per cent of Ireland's working age population, compared to a European average of 12 per cent. The 35- to 54-year-old category account for 43 per cent of the population, while those aged 55 to 64 make up just 10 per cent.

Indeed, the millennials will represent a greater proportion of the European workforce by 2010 than people born just after the second World War.

Understanding what drives millennial workers helps companies both to attract and to develop these individuals and enables organisations to leverage their behaviour with technology to find and to serve new and existing partners, suppliers and customers, the Xerox study showed.

While 94 per cent of Irish organisations recognised the different working styles of this new generation, just 65 per cent of them believe their companies are responding to the characteristics of this emerging workforce. This figure placed Ireland as the fourth least responsive of the countries polled.

Although a large percentage of Irish executives are aware that the millennials will have an impact on their organisation's innovation and development of new products, marketing and selling of products, and service to customers among other business areas, the majority of companies were not introducing the business tools used by the new generation to improve their operation.

Sixty per cent of Irish organisations said they had no plans to provide online portals where customers can rate and discuss products, while 30 per cent of European companies are already doing so.

Fifty-two per cent said they didn't intend to monitor customer discussions or blogs outside the organisation's environment, even though our 48 per cent of their European counterparts are currently doing this.

While 24 per cent of European executives had no plans to automatically request online e-mail surveys to gauge customer and supplier satisfaction, that figure jumped to 36 per cent for Ireland.

"This is a missed opportunity for selling and marketing to emerging generations in a cost effective way," said Paul Devine, an analyst at Forrester who worked on the study, entitled Is Europe Ready for the Millennials?.

"You can do a lot more online and by using self-service capabilities, and people like doing things themselves instead of waiting in call-centre queues. Also, companies should be testing their products in online user groups before bringing it to market."

An unwillingness among Irish organisations to use external websites, blogs and discussion forums to market their products and services is completely adverse to the emerging generation's social computing practices whereby they share their opinions and advice online, Mr Devine said.

The millennials don't trust mainstream advertising campaigns, choosing instead to put their faith in independent advice in blogs and forums.

Among the elements that millennials need at work for them to be at their most productive are up-to-date technology, a forward-thinking and innovative employer and a flexible working environment and schedule.

This generation lacks the workaholic drive of their burned-out predecessors but compensates by using a variety of technologies, often at once, to enable them to get the job done quickly so that they can have a personal life too, according to the Xerox study.

For flexible work programmes to be successful, employers must focus on the results of the work millennials carry out rather than the number of hours staff sit at their desk, the study found.

Telecommuting workers need support via Web conferences, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and mobile e-mail devices outside the offices.

Even though 68 per cent of European executives expect an increase of up to 50 per cent in the number of employees working outside the office by 2010, most are not making remote tools widely available, especially in Ireland.

Just 17 per cent of Irish organisations give mobile phones to more than three-quarters of their workforce, in contrast to a European average of 24 per cent. Almost a third said none of their staff have Blackberrys, and just 16 per cent said more than 75 per cent of their employees had received a laptop from work.

Forrester pointed out that Sun Microsystems saved $63.8 million (€48.5 million) in office and property costs in the financial year of 2005 as a result of the company's flexible work programme.

Employees at AT&T, meanwhile, gained an extra productive hour each day when they were allowed to work at home.