Remodeling Corporate Culture for the Digital Era

The desire for constant connection among the Millennial workforce is exactly the characteristic most valuable for businesses that operate globally. Having a workforce that delights in instantaneous communication, that is always on and always reaching out to new social contacts, can furnish a tremendous competitive advantage to businesses today.

While the Millennial generation hoards the headlines that declare the latest trends in technology and their applications to the workplace, it's worth remembering that it was the Baby Boomers who put the "e" in email, e-learning and e-commerce . The foundations of the Digital Era that forever changed the way we work, shop, learn and play were built by innovators born from the mid-1940s through the 1950s.

The past half century has been a period of building great businesses founded on technology- driven processes that run by the clock and the calendar. In the new millennium, however, technology has been redefined -- as has the employee. It's no coincidence that employees entering the workforce today wear no wristwatch and carry no calendar in their wallet.

As the great entrepreneurs of the Boomer generation flock to retirement resorts, the great innovators of Gen Y move into their positions, a joyously different breed of human being in a corporate landscape where Millennials seem strange to management and managers seem hopelessly antiquated to their new employees.

Many organizations traditionally have tracked progress and success in terms of hours billed, rates charged, quantities delivered or facilities expanded. Millennials, on the other hand, can't grasp the concept of a "clock watcher." For the most part, they do not distinguish between work hours and personal hours -- it's all one life for Millennials.

That's because they carry the digital devices they use at home into their work. Their preference is to work whenever and wherever they are most productive, and technology has allowed them to succeed in that pursuit, with handheld devices that place an office full of capabilities in their pocket. The BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) phenomenon is creating security headaches for IT staff, but it's helping 21st century companies experience their own boom.

Millennials shun museum pieces like land lines, conference room calendars, time sheets and "The 6:00 News." Rather, they thrive on instant messaging, Skype and Kinect, social networks and texts. More than any previous generation, they are totally comfortable with talking to strangers and colleagues half a world away -- they probably already are friends on Facebook (Nasdaq: FB) or followers on Twitter.

Social networks, furthermore, provide a communications path for a generation who could care less about privacy issues and readily declare and share every aspect of their lives, from breakfast to business proposals.

"Communicating" is not a function or activity for Millennials -- it's an environment. It's just always present, always available, and always necessary. These workers may never have heard a dial tone. They grew up with a mobile phone on their belt and at their ear.

These are the students who drove English teachers nuts with insertions like "IMHO" and "LOL" throughout their compositions. They are the first generation in a century not to plead with parents to take them to the Department of Motor Vehicles on their 16th birthday -- and to buy them a car, as well. These young adults live the majority of their lives in the virtual world, and they don't need to drive to stores, to movie theaters or even to schools. It's all "e- vailable" to them on that device in their pocket.

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Remodeling Corporate Culture for the Digital Era