Young people increasingly demand a mobile workplace

Young people live mobile and want to work in a mobile workplace

If you as an employer expect to be able to work with a punch clock and staff presence in the office between 8 am and 5 pm, you will probably experience some difficulties in finding young talent for your company. This is because freedom, flexibility and mobility are aspects of employment that are highly prioritized among younger generations today.

This is largely due to the fact that young people today live much more mobile and digital lives than older generations do and have done. Working life should simply reflect the life they live through a mobile workplace. According to a report from PWC, for example, 41% of all millennials surveyed say they prefer to communicate digitally rather than face-to-face or by phone.

On the other hand, it is of course increasingly difficult for the older generation, who will soon be leaving the workforce to retire, to feel that they belong in a world where everything is connected and constant accessibility is required.

And it is not only the employee who has higher expectations - our customers, colleagues and suppliers also expect accessibility and rapid response. Not receiving a reply to an email within a few hours is something that many people today would react to, compared to the days when much of the correspondence between businesses was done by post....

Digital enablers for a mobile workplace - a matter of trust

Ultimately, the question of how digitally adapted a workplace is also becomes a question of trust. If, as a young person today, you are met by a company that is far behind from a digital point of view and lacks many of the tools that are expected to be available, trust is lacking because you then find it difficult to see a future - either for the company or as an employee. If you lack what young workers see as the basic requirements for a mobile workplace, in the worst case scenario, they won't even bother to apply.

If you are looking for young talent, you know that today it is the workers' market that prevails. Many people can pick and choose jobs and young people today have an incredibly high level of self-confidence. They know what skills they have and what value they have on the labor market.

This is one of the reasons why employees today are significantly less loyal in terms of how long they choose to stay with a company. The Millennials at Work report from PWC shows that over 25% of all respondents expect to have more than six employers - more than double the results of previous studies.

That's why it takes a lot more than it did in the past to make an employer attractive to attract - and retain - employees. The days of working 40 years in the same company are simply over.

If you do not offer a mobile workplace, your employees will find alternatives.

Even if young professionals choose a workplace where digital development has lagged behind, they find new ways to meet their needs. They find their own solutions through, for example, free applications that are not actively approved by the employer - so-called "shadow IT". These include file-sharing systems or chat functions that facilitate communication between colleagues. The problem is that if the employee leaves and has stored all their data in a cloud service separate from the organization, there is no way to access this information. And, of course, this creates more vulnerabilities in terms of the company's IT security.

Another risk of not digitally adapting the business to a mobile workplace is that productivity decreases. If you do not have the opportunity to work from home, for example, you cannot finish what you started in the office and then it has to wait until the next day. If you expect to be able to work in a certain way and the company you work for does not provide the right conditions for that, the worst case scenario is a demoralized workforce that may not work harder than absolutely necessary.

At WeSafe, we know how important it is to provide the right work tools to maintain attractiveness as an employer. If you have any questions about this article or want to know more about the requirements of young employees in terms of digital ways of working, don't hesitate to contact us!

Contact us to learn more about how WeSafe and Microsoft products can help employers provide the right digital work tools!