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To be connected or not to be A new generation of professionals is entering corporate life: Generation Y. They have grown up and been educated in a world with full-blown internet and they expect to take their connectivity to their work space – using their favorite devices wherever they are. The world now has two generations: digital natives and digital immigrants. Will they (get to) understand each other, in the office or on the factory floor?
To be connected or not to be A new generation of professionals is entering corporate life: Generation Y. They have grown up and been educated in a world with full-blown internet and they expect to take their connectivity to their work space – using their favorite devices wherever they are. The world now has two generations: digital natives and digital immigrants. Will they (get to) understand each other, in the office or on the factory floor?
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Merry Christmas, Ms. CIO!Members of Generation Y, also called the Net Generation or the Millennials, have a strong desire to be connected with other people and to be social. Smartphones and other mobile devices are the enabling tools. The activities that these devices facilitate are clearly more important to a Gen Y-er than the technology that supports them. Gen Y likes to use technology to increase customization, convenience and collaborationi, yet at the same time, Gen Y members rank face-to-face interactions in a learning context in either first or second place.ii
In their personal lives, Gen Y-ers are heavy users of social networks and virtual communities. Flickr, Orkut, Facebook, Foursquare and many other platforms provide plenty of opportunity for social interaction.
During the course of their education, they’ve used the internet for fast and easy access to myriad sources of information
– some reliable, others less so, and some not at all. Gen Y-ers haven’t concerned themselves with the underlying technology, but they have clear ideas as to what type of application they need for what purpose. They have used the Web for their school research (94%), and 78% believe that it helped them with schoolwork.iii
Studies show that the generation raised with the computer gathers and processes information differently than previous generations. They also differ from previous generations in other aspectsiv :
• Ability to read visual images – they are intuitive visual communicators
• Visual-spatial skills – perhaps because of their expertise with games they can integrate the virtual and physical
• Inductive discovery — they learn better through discovery than by being told
• Attentional deployment – they are able to shift their attention rapidly from one task to another, and may choose not to pay attention to things that don’t interest them
• Fast response time – they are able to respond quickly and expect rapid responses in return
The Net Generation at workThe Net Generation clearly has its own characteristics, which the corporate world will have to take into account in order to fully leverage this group’s competences. Let’s have a look at the characteristics that are most relevant to working environments.
Gen Y is digitally literate – members intuitively use a variety of IT devices and have learned to piece information together from different sources. They do not think linearly, and because they know the Web so well they know where to find relevant and reliable information but they also realize it will not cover all their information needs.
Because they are almost always connected, they have adopted mobile connectivity as a way of living. When moving from home to school, from school to social events, or from home to work, they remain connected; the mobile devices (smartphone and tablet) are central to this connectivity. This also explains why they are quick to react to
iv Marc Prensky, “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, Part II: Do They Really Think Differently? “On the Horizon, vol. 9, no. 6 (December 2001), pp. 15–24; available from http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/, mentioned in Diana Oblinger, Op. Cit.
i Diana Oblinger & James Oblinger, “Is it Age or IT: First Steps toward Understanding the Net Generation”, www.educause.eduii Diana Oblinger, Op. Cit.iii Amanda Lenhart, Maya Simon, and Mike Graziano, “The Internet and Education: Findings of the Pew Internet & American Life Project” (Washington, D.C.:
Pew Internet & American Life Project, September 2001), http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Schools_Report.pdf, mentioned in Diana Oblinger, Op. Cit.
Sarah Callens, study consultant & trainer, Frajlick Campus
“Younger people work faster with the new communication channels, but also superficially. The older generations do master them, but use them more cautiously. Sharing their knowledge with each other will open perspectives for the future.”Marino Vandooren, Technical Manager, BelgomilkThis is the personal opinion of the interviewee. It does not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the organization he represents.“Technology as a
tool should generate added value. Complex technical solutions that only appeal to young techies won’t fit the bill. The rise of easy-to-use devices with intuitive interfaces has largely closed the generation gap.”Sandy Dekkers, ICT-verantwoordelijke, JMSThis is the personal opinion of the interviewee. It does not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the organization he represents.
“Pursuing uniformity in the offered technologies is a first prerequisite to bridging generation gaps. With the help of targeted training and follow-up, all generations can find each other in a communication tool that acts as a kind of hub.”Ludo Dreesen, Systems Responsible, New Administrative Center, Town of Houthalen-HelchterenThis is the personal opinion of the interviewee. It does not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the organization he represents.
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messages or retrieve information. So fast, in fact, that accuracy or conventional wording is often sacrificed for speed.
Most Gen Y workers prefer to learn from their peers, and from hands-on experience, rather than being told how to do something by others (usually digital immigrants). One of the key challenges in our educational system today is the conflict between digital immigrants (teachers) telling digital natives how to gather information or learn.
Their experience with social interaction activities mean that Gen Y workers are open to interaction with others, even if they do not know members of a group personally. With a stunning openness to diversity, they share emotional and
personal information about themselves without hesitation. It is also natural for them to participate in cause-related com-munity activities, such as environmental concerns or neighborhood safety. They truly believe they can make a difference.
A 2011 study of 1,000 participants by communication agency Frajlick Campusv highlights ten important points:
• Gen Y workers prefer to rely on peers to solve problems rather than on managers.
• 22% of Gen Y members have no problem with the boss asking them to work late, compared to 40% of baby boomers.
• One out of two Gen Y workers is stressed by a lack of guidelines on the job.
v Frajlick Campus, Generation Y, Generation X and the Baby Boomers: Beyond Stereotypes (in Dutch language), 2011
• 53% of Gen Y workers are against restrictions to internet access at work for private purposes, but 47% doesn’t make a point of it.
• Managing several tasks at once causes considerably more stress for Gen Y workers than previous generations.
• One out of three Gen Y workers feels stressed when having to manage a project alone.
• The use of new technology is more stressful for Gen Y workers than it is for Gen X workers. Baby Boomers are stressed the most by the introduction of new technology.
• Saving extra hours to exchange them for extra holidays is particularly attractive to Gen Y workers.
• Gen Y workers don’t like to work with out-of-date IT, but neither do other generations.
Will digital natives change the rules? Dividing populations by generation is a generalization, and not all of the assumptions implied in such a division are correct. It’s argued that the pervasiveness of technology leads most professional workers to adopt some characteristics of Generation Y: Nowadays who isn’t constantly connected? Who doesn’t retain contact data on their mobile phone’s memory instead of in their own? The Frajlick Campus study suggests there is reason to talk about a Culture Y, rather than a Generation Y, and points out that there seem to be fewer differentiating factors than expected. Some stereotypes are not confirmed by the findings:
• Gen Y workers are not better multi-taskers than the previous generations.
• Gen Y workers are not more familiar with the use of new technologies.
• Gen Y workers do not appreciate teamwork more than other generations.
“Different generations have different views on the importance of communication media. It’s necessary to reach an agreement on the position that they occupy. IT mainly has a supporting role in this.” Paul Jordens, CIO, Corona DirectThis is the personal opinion of the interviewee. It does not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the organization he represents.
“Technology makes it easier to work together, but there must be a consensus on which tools are used and how they are applied, otherwise effective cooperation simply won’t happen. From an ICT point of view, we can implement tools, but it has to be driven from within the organization and supported by policy.”Geert Beyen, ICT Program Manager Europe, Wolters Kluwer This is the personal opinion of the interviewee. It does not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the organization he represents.
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Market research from Newcom Research & Consultancy in The Netherlands (from the beginning of 2013, with a representative sample of age 15 and more) shows an increasing use of mobile devices to access preferred social applications. To visit Facebook, most youth between the ages of 15 and 19 used a smartphone (54%), compared to 31% over all age groups. Older generations prefer a laptop or desktop computer. To tweet, 70% of youth use their smartphone (compared to 54% for all age groups).
■ Smartphone ■ Tablet (e.g. iPad) ■ Laptop/desktop ■ Don't know
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
93
86
54
31
20
13
12
11
10
9
6
2
3
7
33
55
62
71
78
75
73
86
86
90
1
1
1
1
1
1
4
10
2
3
3
4
7
12
13
17
16
9
10
7
4
5
5
Foursquare
YouTube
Google+
MySpace
Flickr
Hyves
Schoolbank
vi Judith A. Pirani, Educause Consultant and President Sheep Pond Associates, Leadership Roundtable, What does BYOE mean to IT, May 2013, found on http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERS1301/ECS1304.pdf
The Y CultureIn a presentation at a Unify business meeting on January 28, 2014 in Brussels, Frajlick study consultant & trainer Sarah Callens referred to the “Y Culture”, a spillover effect that is found increasingly in all currently active generations. Organizations built on this Y Culture embrace four key concepts: interactivity, individualization, critical learning attitude and instant gratification.
Interactivity is a general phenomenon in today’s economy. We all use fast and easy tools like booking.com, tripadvisor or groupon to organize our lives and fulfill our choices.
Individualization – which is not individualism – is based on the availability of individual tailor-made choices to each of us: TV on demand is an example of something that is used by all generations.
The critical attitude meets the closed-loop expectations of today’s transparent world: to continuously question events, to search for answers, and to give sense to events.
Instant gratification fits into the demanding realm of fast-moving business processes, remote working, and closed-loop processes.
Team 2.0Sarah Callens believes that successful teams of the future – team 2.0 – will be those that manage to build their performance on the dynamics of including different generations within the team. These multi-generational teams will feature increased interactivity between the members of the group, more personalized communication and individual management by proximity, more attention to fast and effective feedback and more critical reflections on processes, initiatives and the system’s (in)coherence.
Merry Christmas, Ms. CIO!Culture Y will require IT departments to be extremely inventive and supportive of the different generations of users. Access constraints, application exclusions, device limitations and other restrictions to connectivity are simply not an option with Culture Y.
This quote from Vice President for IT Pattie Orr of University Libraries, Baylor University is illuminatingvi : “We took a measurement of the number of unique devices on our network in fall of 2011 and we experienced over a 16% increase in unique devices when the students came back from break. Merry Christmas to me! Over 4,000 of the newest types of devices to support!”
“Young people are more receptive to new communications media and expect them to be available anytime, anywhere and across all communication channels; while older people often require more persuasion and guidance to employ them and are more aware of the risks. These critical judgment skills can help us to use technology to support the organization.” Steven De Vriendt, ICT Expert, Aalter Local AuthorityThis is the personal opinion of the interviewee. It does not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the organization he represents.
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