Report: Millennials Will Route Around IT Departments
According to a new report by Accenture, a large number of Millennials (those born between 1977 and 1997), expect their companies to accommodate their IT preferences, including their preferred computers and applications. More than a third of Millennials also indicated that they were dissatisfied with the technologies their employers currently provide.
Among other things, Millennials would prefer to use instant messaging, text messaging, and RSS feeds to communicate with their clients and customers, though very few companies currently support these technologies. The report also highlights that a lot of employees are simply bypassing corporate IT departments if those don't offer them the services they need.
Going Rogue
One of the most interesting results of this study is that this difference between expectations and reality has led over a quarter of the employees surveyed by Accenture to use technology that is unsupported and unsanctioned by their corporate IT departments. Almost half of all Millennials who use social networks, blogs, vlogs, or Twitter do so without support from their IT departments (and often against the IT policies of their companies). Millennials also see no problem with using unsupported mobile phones or instant messaging services at work.
Interestingly, a quarter of those who use online collaboration tools and open-source software also do so without support.
A staggering 60% of the employees surveyed by Accenture argue that they are unaware of their companies' IT policies or that they are simply not interested in following them.
The End of Email?
The report also highlights that the slow shift away from email as a preferred way to communicate continues. While older Millennials still spend around 9.5 hours a week writing and receiving work-related emails, younger Millennials in the workforce only spend about 7.7 hours on email. In contrast to this, high school and college students only spend about two hours a week on email and clearly prefer instant messaging, text messaging, or social networking sites to talk to their friends.
Of course, these are also exactly the forms of communication that most employers are not supporting yet.
Choices
The Accenture report argues that, in the long run, companies will have to adapt to their employees' technology preferences. After all, over half of the respondents in this study (52%) said that a company's use of technology was a major factor when they select an employer (though the current economic climate might turn this into a luxury for many employees).
This report definitely makes it clear that IT departments can either choose to adopt some of these technologies, or they will risk that a large number of their young employees will simply go rogue.
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When you said going rogue, I thought you meant they were using their own computers. Which is what I do. I have a desktop and a cubicle, but I am much more often at the coffee shop with my laptop. Granted, my job is flexible enough to let me, but I see in the future no differentiation between your work and personal technologies.
Agreed - IT is definitely having a difficult time identifying which sites and applications are clearly personal and which can really help us do our jobs better. Who's to say that downloading industry podcasts from itunes or viewing from a streaming site is something that is not work-related?
Also - irt the comment about not knowing the policies... I thought Gen Y was all about "do and then ask for forgiveness?"
Alternate headlines:
- Millennials' sense of entitlement unaffected by recession, tightening job market, etc.
- Boomer and Gen X managers completely out of touch with vibrant, cutting-edge, social-media savvy workers
So why is this news? Did accenture take an old report and change the years again?
I'm with Orlando. People have routed around IT to get things done for years - the fact that the pretentiously named "Millenials" are doing it isn't at all revolutionary. It's not even new. Please quit hyping the 'Millenials' as if everything they do is somehow new, original and important. In most cases it's not.
Also, how was 'supported by IT' understood by those surveyed? A lot of technology isn't explicitly supported by IT in the sense that IT doesn't install it, doesn't have a preferred app for the task and won't provide helpdesk support for it. But that does NOT mean it's prohibited and thus that people are contravening IT policies.
The first comparison (9.5 to 7.7) is interesting. However, I think that comparison still needs to be done of the two cohorts but at the same age. I.e. we need to compare email usage of two generational cohorts when they were each, for example, 25 years old and working.
The comparison of work-related emailing to high-school and college emailing is useless. Completely different usage scenarios.
I'm old enough to remember the introduction of personal computers into the workspace. In many cases it was an act of revolt against the computing priesthood to sneak into the workplace an Apple or PC running Visicalc and Wordstar. Over time the priesthood adapted, eventually absorbing the personal computer into a Borg-like network of "imaged" machines limited to official corporate configurations of official corporate software.
Sarbanes-Oxley exacerbated this process, giving IT departments carte blanche to issue edicts against unsanctioned communications protocols on grounds of mumble mumble Sarbanes-Oxley. Access to Gmail becomes forbidden. Instant messaging is off-limits. So we wind up communicating through Twitter, until it gets blocked by Bluecoat.
The arms race is not new. And it won't end.
Amen, Orlando. As usual, Accenture is far behind the times on modern concepts. If they weren't busy f*cking up so many things, they may have time to catch up on the obvious. Heck, maybe they'd go all "Web 2.0" on us!
No wonder we have economic problems if businesses are relying on reports of this standard from people such as Accenture.
'While older Millennials still spend around 9.5 hours a week writing and receiving work-related emails, younger Millennials in the workforce only spend about 7.7 hours on email."
I have not doubt that there is actually a proper / true change to some degree from email to instant messaging, but the main difference in the figures provided will be down to job type / organisational position. Naturally younger Millennials will be predominantly in entry / base level positions. As people move up the chain into supervisory / more senior positions, they inevitably are involved in more email circulation of reports, dealing with customers on a more formal level, etc etc, and hence need to rely on more email. Then you have the boss who spends hours and hours a day just to wade through all the emails they have been CC'd in on (to keep them up to date). Guess what, bosses tend to still be older and not 'young millennials'.
Accenture should study how email usage is changing based on job / position context.
And if companies want to start adapting to their employees' technology preferences and don't know how? Who can they seek for help?
Why, Accenture of course! :)
Younger people's communication methods ARE changing. College kids (man, now I sound really old!) don't use email except to communicate with professors or parents. FB and SMS is now the preferred means of getting in touch with peers. Eventually this will have an impact on enterprises... at the very least there has to be some recent graduate somewhere starting the next big company, and I wonder if email will be central to that organization.
The other big thing that IT org's will have to deal with is devices like the iPhone. These "phones" automatically try to connect to every and any wifi spot available, and if any random employee knows the password to the wifi network then their iPhone is connected to the enterprise. Corporations are either going to have to totally secure their wireless networks or somehow shut out these devices.
Corporations are either going to have to totally secure their wireless networks or somehow shut out these devices
Amen, Orlando. As usual, Accenture is far behind the times on modern concepts. If they weren't busy f*cking up so many things, they may have time to catch up on the obvious. Heck, maybe they'd go all "Web 2.0" on us!