Building the cloud for the new Millennials
The modern workforce is undoubtedly rapidly changing in complexion, as ever-greater numbers of Baby Boomers contemplate retirement and they are steadily replaced by a whole new generation: the Millennials. Born roughly between the early 1980s and the early 2000s, this is the generation that your company must attract - and retain.
So, what keeps the average Millennial happily on a modern company's payroll? Higher pay, or more generous benefits? Certainly not. Instant feedback on their efforts and a highly collaborative work culture? Most definitely. Even better is that this can all be achieved by tapping into the Millennial's strong digital proficiency.
All roads lead back to the cloud
Time and time again, when one contemplates what it is that can best engage the Millennial in the workplace, it is cloud computing that arises as the obvious solution.
How so? Well, Millennials feel a great need to control and master their environment. This has partly manifested in their being the first generation to truly embrace flexible working - the notion that it doesn't matter what or how many meetings they attend, whether they come into the office or what schedule they work by, just as long as they get the work done on time and to a high standard.
Such allowances for the Millennial free spirit have helped to drive up younger employee satisfaction and retention - but have you considered how cloud services and solutions ranging from Microsoft Office 365 to SharePoint and Yammer can give them even greater autonomy with which to power your business forward?
Appeal to every Millennial instinct with the cloud
It is the Millennial generation that is truly "digital native" - the workers who have grown up alongside the first search engines and who treat their mobile devices - with the collaboration and social media technologies that they serve as a portal for - as an ingrained part of their lives.
Millennials don't want to have to rifle through filing cabinets or make calls to other departments in order to access vital information. While Millennials cannot claim to know everything, they most certainly do know how to seek out the right information, quickly - but they do expect the infrastructure around them that enables them to achieve this.
The bald truth of the matter is that those who have grown up using Dropbox and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications will find it very backward-thinking to use location specific tools. Such individuals, who are comfortable using an iPad and feel that mobility is essential to their work, are so often miffed as to why those of an older generation stick to a partially dead technology.
Assembling the infrastructure that best serves Millennials
What all of this means is that every company needs to assess whether its current infrastructure is truly built for the future. This doesn't mean that a company should simply go out and buy lots of new tech, but it does mean that it should first try to understand its workers' requirements, before determining what technology will fully equip them.
The cloud is a central part of such technology in the year 2015, allowing your Millennial workers to access their information from anywhere and providing them with a cost-efficient, agile and secure system that frees them from constraints that older generations of workers might have long taken for granted.
It is with the cloud as part of your company's 21st century infrastructure that you can encourage a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) culture in your workplace, while still retaining the sovereignty of data through tools like Enterprise Mobility Suite.
The cloud could also be the key platform for boosting the mobility of your workers, enabling them to chat rather than email and work through Office 365 - to say nothing of the potential for a consistent User Interface (UI) to be created for use by all of your personnel, alongside the creation of great hubs like SharePoint.
Why the right infrastructure matters so much
People are the most important part of any company, so it stands to reason that you will want to be able to hire the best people you can. Now, beyond a financial incentive, a great way to lure good people is to equip them with the tools that they need. In showing such prospective employees your intention to build your infrastructure around them, you are more likely to convince them to go with you - and stick with you.
The Millennials that are flooding into today's labour market respond best to systems characterised by speed, agility, accessibility and reliability. They aren't afraid of the very latest technology. Indeed, they actively demand the most streamlined, effective and best-equipped communications platforms that foster a highly collaborative culture, in which they can receive immediate feedback and insights, be inspired and simply get more work done.
Cloud migration is therefore one of the investments of uppermost importance for a wide range of enterprises - small, medium, large and in almost any sector. Why not start a journey of discovery for your Millennial employees with a Customer Immersion Centre that gives them a sense of what is possible with the cloud and how it can help them and your company to thrive for a long time to come - starting with the rest of 2015 and into 2016?
