Are you a millennial? With millennials now making up the largest chunk of the workforce, there is a good chance that you might be.
Just for your reference, people born between 1981 and 1992 are typically called the millennial generation. The generation that grew up with the internet and the digital revolution well underway. The one that is all about themselves. The one that refuses to move out of their parents’ basements. The one that is socially conscious and liberal in its attitudes. Most importantly, the one that will make up 75% of the workforce by 2030.
This is a generation that was born and raised with technology all around them. Which probably explains their huge affinity towards gamifying every aspect of their lives. Want them to perform better at work? Why not gamify some key functions and watch the magic.
1. Wrike
Multi-tasking is second nature to this generation. A millennial watching TV as they eat and fidget with their iPhones and listen to music at the same time is an everyday sight. This behavior carries on into the workplace too. The range of multitasking that millennials end up doing means a lot of their work may either be misplaced or disorganized.
Nip this issue in the bud by introducing a project management tool like Wrike. Not only does it help keep documents, files and all other details related to your project in on place, it also helps hyper social millennials to collaborate with one another as they go ahead and complete their tasks. You can tag specific team members with @mentions and share documents with clients and agencies outside your company as well. Wrike also connects to Google Drive and allows attachments of all kinds making it a perfect repository for your projects, plans and shared work items.
2. Slack
Want to get the entire team into a conference room for yet another meeting. Perish the thought. Meetings are known to be one of the most prominent killers of productivity in a workplace, accomplishing little to nothing in most cases. Moreover with the number of devices that we tag along with us into every meeting, there’s little chance that your team is even engaged with the topic being discussed. Why not adopt a different approach to communication instead?
Slack offers an instant messaging service that blends inter and intra team communication into a sleek, easy to use and highly addictive interface. Unlike older messaging services, old conversations are not buried under piles of inconsequential banter. You can easily search from earlier conversations, use fun emojis like you would in a regular text conversation. It even offers autocomplete for your coworkers’ names to save you the trouble of typing it all out. By allowing one to one as well as one to many conversations, Slack replaces email and makes reaching out to your team a whole lot easier.
It syncs various devices including your desktop, iPad and smartphone to keep you connected wherever you are. Stay on top of new messages with notifications that you can manage.
3. WooBoard
Millennials are people who grew up in an affirmative, encouraging educational system that praised them every step of the way. Those participation medals and trophies that you’ve scoffed at? Yup, millennials were the first generation to receive them. This social conditioning that this generation has received since childhood makes millennials especially seek out appreciation and approval from others. An environment that does not offer them a pat on the back every now and then can fast become a depressing place to be for them.
Get your millennials up and raring to go by offering them what gets them going – some real time appreciation. A tool like WooBoard allows employers to build an atmosphere of peer to peer recognition and support. Every piece of appreciation one employee receives gets instantly broadcast to the entire team and helps make the employee feel even more special. Employees earn points and badges with each acknowledgement that they receive from others, making the whole process a lot more fun. You even have the option of trading in your points for rewards like an Amazon, Macy’s or iTunes gift card by activating WooBoard’s built in reward management system.
4. TripCase
Business travel, especially frequent business travel can be a pain in the backside. Keeping track of all your reservations, meal expenses, cab fares and receipts, submitting them at work for reimbursements on time can eat up a lot of productive time from any employee’s schedule. Now throw an impatient, disorganized millennial into the mix and chaos ensues.
TripCase is one of those all-in-one savior apps that lets you handle nearly every aspect of your business trip with ease. Not only can you manually store details of your upcoming trips, you can allow TripCase to automatically create your trips for you by forwarding your confirmation emails to them directly. You can do the exact same thing for other engagements that you may have through the day like a lunch meeting or a late-evening play you plan to attend. If you booked a flight or hotel on Travelocity or a cab via Uber, your bookings are auto-synced and you don’t need to bother creating a new trip.
TripCase also has some super useful functions like offering you updates about your itineraries on a real time basis – delayed flights, gate changes, cancelled flights etc. You can pick your seat or get driving directions to your destination right from within TripCase. The coolest bit? You can even carry TripCase on your wrist right inside your new Apple Watch.
Wrapping Up
Dealing with millennials is very different from dealing with the rest of your coworkers. What drives them, what they aspire towards and how they function on a day to day basis is vastly different from previous generations, thanks in large part to technology and its omnipresence in their lives. Get on board with the right tech tools to keep your millennials a happy, motivated and engaged lot. Have any specific tools you use at your workplace that has helped with younger employees? Give us a shout and share it for all to know!
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