What the Millennial Workforce Takeover Means for Internal Communications

As of 2017, more than one third of American workers (35%) were Millennials, making them now the largest generation in the U.S. labor force, according to the Pew Research Center’s analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Given that Millennials only started making their way into the workforce in the late 1990s, this means rapid change–the kind of sea change that’s difficult for even the best organizations to keep up with.

But it’s especially important to take note of these two important characteristics about Millennials:

1. While workers from older generations have been long accustomed to PCs, email and even fax machines, Millennials feel more digital familiarity with mobile apps, news feeds, messaging, and generally richer audio and video media experiences like on-demand video, private podcasts, and live streams.
2. In addition, according to Gallup, 87 percent of millennials say they see professional development as an important part of their jobs.

Taken together, Millennials’ distinct cravings to learn and grow, coupled with their technology expectations and preferences separate them from past generations in the workforce – and present unique challenges for internal communications, enablement and training.

As purebred digital natives, Millennials’ content consumption habits and preferences are generally far ahead of the capabilities usually offered by most IT departments.

So what does all of this mean for internal communications, enablement and training professionals? Having worked with many large organizations to enable a variety of communication modernization programs, we recommend the following:

1. Assess your Millennial engagement effectiveness
   Take surveys to find out what employees and teams think about the internal communications and enablement programs you’re running. Ask them how accessible, contemporary and valuable they find individual programs and technologies – and ask them about their content consumption preferences.
2. Build a program roadmap based on the gaps and KPIs
   What have your surveys told you about expectations and where they’re not being met? Which of those gaps are the widest? And what’s the urgency or priority around each of them? You won’t solve every problem with one single program. Be smart about prioritizing initiatives with a documented roadmap, and be thoughtful about how you’ll measure the KPIs that will be best for signaling success or struggle.
3. Enlist the help of Millennials internally throughout the process
   Millennials are eager to learn and grow. Training employees with a private podcast is a great way to get millennials engaged with the organization’s message. But before creating a private podcast, seek out their input and feedback through the beginning, middle and end of your process. By validating your takeaways, strategies and tactics with them, you’ll be more likely to hit the mark.

Are you looking to be a changemaker for your company’s workforce engagement efforts? Find out how creating a secure podcast can inform and engage employees and teams in ways never before possible.