The Millennial Generation – A New Breed of Employee
Posted by: Lorraine Cregar in Communication, Demographics, tags: Baby Boomers, Change Communication, Communication, Demographics, Gen X, Millennials, workforce demographicsThe 80 million Baby Boomers are approaching one of life’s major milestones – retirement. And many companies are preparing for the brain drain that will cause. Ready to step in are the 46 million or so Gen Xers.
But there’s a new generation on the horizon – affectionately called the Millennials. Born between 1982 and 2000, they are 76 million strong and now are beginning to graduate from college and flood the job market.
Millennials have been described as tech savvy. In a 2007 book by Reynol Junco and Jeanna Mastrodicasa, a survey 7,705 U.S. college students showed:
97% own a computer
76% use instant messaging
15% of IM users are logged on 24 hours a day/7 days a week
34% use Web sites as their primary source of news
28% own a blog and 44% read blogs
49% download music using peer-to-peer file sharing
75% have a Facebook account
Given the generational differences between the Baby Boomers and the Millennials – and don’t forget the Gen Xers – employers will be challenged to integrate these generations into their workplaces as the old and new worlds collide. So what will that mean for communicating to them?
Likely it will mean increasing message multiplicity by combining more traditional methods – company newsletters, e-mails, and memos – with more modern methods, like blogs, RSS feeds and text messages to their cell phones. It also might mean developing ways to personalize each and every message to a Millennial recipient.
This would mean implementing technologies to gather data on their own employees’ habits and usage to create individual user profiles. With their propensity for sharing details about themselves through things like Facebook, MySpace, and receiving banking updates on their cell phones, one might assume this to be an acceptable endeavor on the part of companies. However, these are waters that haven’t yet been thoroughly tested.
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Great post, and very interesting suggestions on company communication. Sounds like the opportunity for development of a new online communication platform for corporations… hmmm
Anyway, I just posted a link to your post at my blog, but thought I’d mention here the comment I made there; that is, even from a 2007 book, those statistics may be very out of date. I remember in grad school, when a year or two old was considered new, but when it comes to online technology use among millennials, a 2007 book with statistics that are probably a year older than that, is probably sorely out of date. For example, I can pretty much guarantee that 75% Facebook usage stat has been blown away by now. I don’t know the answer to this quandary, other than doing constant research, as it’s tough to find up-to-the minute research, but it’s an interesting problem to consider when trying to find accurate information about these topics.
Again, great post. Thanks!