Imagine the thought of getting to work and realizing you forgot to close your garage door.
One moment you are skipping to the kitchen to get your coffee, then, panic strikes.
First comes the initial moment you realize what a tragic mistake you’ve made.
Then comes the incessant mind racing.
Did I close it...did I not? Nope, I definitely did not. The thought of having to go through your entire day is debilitating. Time will crawl slower than an injured caterpillar.
Unfortunately, this feeling is pretty on par with how a Millennial would react if they forgot their cell phone at home. Yes, I'm comparing the fear of your home being burglarized with forgetting an accessory.
Again, tragic.
This little picture I painted is meant to get you in the mindset of just how important technology is to Millennials. The thought of being unreachable for that really important phone call they are DEFINITELY going to receive, or worse, missing a coveted text message, is terrifying.
It’s no revolutionary statement that Millennials are obsessed with technology in both their work and social life. While the above situation is absolutely ridiculous to people who lived the majority of their lives without Google (how did anyone ever know anything?), I’m about to shine a light from the other end of the tunnel.
Millennials are technology dependent, but they are also technology experts. They can sit in front of a computer they’ve never used before and probably have the basics figured out within minutes, probably less. Cell phones? Even easier. Regardless of the model. Windows, Apple, Android, they’ve got all of them mastered - it’s second nature.
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And you think you have it bad with Millennials? Just wait - this is a video of a baby unlocking an iPhone. A baby. While this is a little disturbing, it sheds light on the fact that the part of the brain that deals with understanding technology is being activated at a far younger age than ever before. This means that by the time these youngins reach the workforce, they can pick up on things really quickly. This is helpful for a couple of reasons.
One reason this should be used to your advantage in the workplace is to monitor productivity. Ten years ago, an employee could be slacking off and it might take their boss a few weeks to notice. Now, a manager can tell if their employee is slacking by the end of the day. Implement programs such as Trello, Any.Do, or Evernote, which help monitor daily tasks, long-term goals, and meetings or sync-ups with other departments. Users invited to view the to-do board will be able to move tasks to different columns based on priority and assign deadlines, checklists, and many more fun (“fun”) things. Your Millennial will probably need a total of about 4 minutes to figure out how a program like this works and bam. Playtime is over. There is no excuse for slacking anymore!
For some tips on picking the right technology for your office, give this a read.
Technology is also a wonderful thing because it makes sales more cutthroat (wonderful, right?) than ever. Working from the marketing side of things, I am able to effectively “score” a lead, pull important information about that lead, and give my sales team not only just a name with a phone number, but key points that will help them close a sale. Look into implementing programs (most are cloud-based, which I mention below) that help manage this process. Mastering these guys will take a little more time as there are many different layers, but once you and your team have them figured out, monitoring the buying process (or whatever it is that you are trying to track) is much more efficient. With this sort of technology, managers are able to see exactly how their teams are interacting cross-departmentally, who is opening or ignoring emails, who has followed up with leads and how many times, and so on and so forth.
Capitalize on the ever-growing and expanding amount of resources available at your fingertips and introduce cloud-based platforms. These programs are becoming increasingly prevalent in the workplace (they are effective for reasons far beyond the few mentioned here) and essentially make all deadlines, within reason, attainable. This is possible because workflow management programs can be accessed from any device, no matter where you are. Employees no longer need to be in the office to work, all they need is the login information and they can access the same information as they can at work.
With this, we are not suggesting you bombard your staff with long-term projects just because they can do work from home, but the excuse “Well, the office was closed so I couldn’t finish” is simply no longer relevant. Employees can get last minute work done at home or over the weekends from the comfort of their couch. There is no reason projects should be far exceeding their assigned deadline without a valid reason. Ah, technology is finally coming to bite those Millennials in the...leg.
What you can take from this is simple: Trying to take technology away from your Millennials will be ineffective and a waste of time; instead, use it in a way that is beneficial for productivity and results. Essentially, don’t fight it but hop on board and drive the train. Win-win.
...How many of you are wondering if you left your garage doors open this morning?
