Talent: Full Steam Ahead with Digital Tools

Chances are your team represents a wide range of demographics – and today, that means a growing percentage of Millennials.

The Millennial generation is ambitious and wants – even demands – to impact the workplace.

That's one of the key attributes of Millennials, and it's also what is driving a lot of the value they contribute. So take advantage of this by fast tracking their aspirations to grow within your environment.

The key, as we heard at Shared Services and Outsourcing Week Europe, is Collaboration with a “capital C”.  

What this means for you? Build a community-oriented, cooperative environment; and focus less on being managers and team leaders and more on being excellent coaches and mentors.

In addition, things that used not to matter do matter today – like funky, functional workspaces; flexi-working; and modern office layouts. And you should really embrace modern social media and digital tools like Instagram [even Facebook is old-school today; just ask your kids].

Millennials can multitask like no one else – in fact they can multi-multi-task. But don’t view this as a problem. Try measuring their output and you’ll be surprised.

One thing to look out for: smooth the path to collaboration by educating long-term managers and generation X’ers on the value Millennials bring [try partnering them to get the best out of both].

Here's a final tip from Chris Gunning of VEON, who led one of the roundtable discussions on Talent: To get more regular face-to-face time, try walking around the block in multigenerational gangs!

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