Over the past 50 or so years each generation has helped our workplace turn into a better environment in which to work. In the mid 1900s people worked at one place, which was run more like a military unit, and retired from there at the end of their career. Then came the boomer generation (those born between 1946 and 1964), who for the first time experienced the vicissitudes of the economy and how that affected the workplace; layoffs became part of the job-market lexicon. The next generation of the workforce, Gen-X (1965–1980)—also called the Me Generation—became more resilient and became more immune to the workplace loyalty ethos, turning their focus on their own economic needs. Then came the Gen-Y (1988–2001), also known as the Millennials, which came of age during the Internet era.
The Generation-Z (born in the 1990s) will represent a major shift in their workplace attitudes. Although they will be entering the workplace in the decade ahead, they represent radically different ideas of how they want to work and what they want to get out of it. A recent study (of 2,800 college students and young professionals conducted in 14 countries) published in the 2011 Cisco Connected World Technology Report reveals some interesting and radical shifts in how the coming generation of workers look at work and at the places that will employ them:
- A majority—56%—of college students expressed that if they encountered a company that banned access to social media they would either not accept the job offer of would join and find a way to circumvent corporate policy.
- Nearly a third of the respondents under 30 said social media freedom and workplace mobility were important than salary—a major shift from the Millennials’ mindset.
- Nearly 25% of the college students expressed their unwillingness to accept a job from a company that has restrictive social media policies.
- In India and China more than 80% of young survey respondents expected that their primary work device should be mobile—a laptop, a smart phone, or a tablet.
- More than 70% also say that they want to be out of the office regularly, working remotely.
- Almost the same percentage of college student respondents also said that they did not want to differentiate between “personal devices” and exclusively work-related devices. This implies that company issued devices should be allowed for personal and business use because of the blending of work and personal communication in their daily lifestyle.
The reason these findings are significant is because, to attract the new generation of workers, employers must consider providing this environment to ALL its employees, not just the new comers. If these changes happen during the next 10 years—and they will—many of the commonly held beliefs about how we work will slowly diminish. Concepts such as work-life integration, telecommuting, and separation of personal and company IP will take on a whole different meaning in tomorrow’s workplace.
Despite these radical workplace changes that will be inevitable for employers in the decades to come, what will not change, though, is how each employee will create value at their company and how that company will deliver that value to the end customer and its investor. What this means to everyone is that unless they see these newly evolving work-place freedoms as enablers of value creation for their company and for their company’s customers and investors, the age-old rules of retaining those employees who contribute the greatest value to their company will still apply, and, in many ways, nothing will really change!
Thank goodness for that!