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The Millennial generation is often undervalued and/or faced with high expectations: they’re considered lazy, disrespectful, and tech-dependant, while their integration to the workplace is critical for the businesses that want to create a natural succession to their baby-boomer and Gen X workforce.
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Luckily, mobility could be a way to satisfy the needs of both parties and create a meaningful connection between the interests of the business and the people.
Millennials in the Workplace
The Millennials are the people who were born between the early 1980’s to 2000, and they belong to the first digitally native generation. It means there was basically no time in their life without technology so they can’t even imagine work without it.
By the time they grew up and entered the world of work, technology had enabled them to work from anywhere, anytime, and they developed their habits accordingly. As a consequence, flexibility has become their most important workplace value and mobility its natural extension.
However, this mobility also has to be limitless, to be able to work regardless of corporate wifi networks or data plans. Since this generation has grown into using technology, not only habits have formed but also preferences for certain devices and applications. Milllenials would like to use their own devices at work and the same applications they have been using.
Technology at the workplace can be a perk that doubles as a work tool, especially if it allows for wide collaboration (another core value for this generation) and offers a seamless user experience. Millennials don’t want to spend their time on training but they will figure out how to use any new tool to get the most out of the working moments.
Millennials are not as numerous of a generation in Europe as they are in the United States. While there they accounted for 27% of the adult population in 2014, European Millennials only account for 24%, according to data from Pew Research.
Besides, the aging of the population is a serious problem in the developed world: due to low birth rates and increasing life expectancy in Europe, for example, the ratio of the 65+ generation has grown from 16.6% to 18.9% in the last ten years. But while the number of workers can be increased by keeping people out of pension for longer, there is also a need for refreshment and attract the younger generations.
Financial institutions: in desperate need of young talent.
The financial services industry, especially insurance, is a sector stricken by the lack of young employees. In a PwC report, 25% of CEO’s surveyed in the financial services sector said they had to cancel strategic initiatives because of the unavailability of the right people.
It could be due to the eroding reputation of the sector: the above report mentions that 21% of the Millennial respondents don’t want to work in financial services and 12% mentioned insurance specifically as an unattractive industry.
Besides a certain attractiveness of the traditionally flexible work of an agent, workplace technology can be a way to fight this trend. In fact, 66% of Millennials would look at the technology an employer uses when considering a job.
Most of all, it means mobile, as this generation thinks mobile-first and mobile-diverse, equally and appropriately choosing between laptops, tablets, and smartphones depending on the situation.
Because of the talent shortage, insurers and other financial services providers have to change mindsets and actively addressing these demands despite the regulatory challenges of data management. An important step is to approach recruiting from a different perspective.
The goal should be to actively engage the right candidates and proposing long-term perspective in a career. Although these young talent will have to be trained, this could be balanced with a quicker onboarding and generally higher level of productivity through mobile devices and applications.
What they lack in expertise they might be able to compensate with more empathy, mainly towards their peers who will also constitute the majority on the client end. Millennials, with their growing purchasing power, can be just the right target for selling financial services. And who could better convince them than someone who is exactly in their shoes? And someone who is in their shoes knows well how a mobile application can be more convincing than a face-to-face meeting.
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