Communicating with the Millennials

Essentially, communication has become the most indispensable element in an institution in determining the organizational success. An institution cannot exist without communication, especially the type of communication that keeps the employees up to date and well-informed about the organization’s vision and strategies as well as to help every individual in the company to work together with a common purpose. The communication between the employer and its employees are vital because through communication, the employer is more able to understand each individual employee’s feelings which, then the employer can make an attempt to change an unsatisfactory situation into a satisfactory work environment. In careful review, significant changes in the workplace are the result of new and advanced technologies. Developments in technology and communication have gone hand-in-hand; the latest technological development is the internet. This has resulted in the advancements of the science of communication to a new level called telecommunication.

The process of human communication and interaction has evolved and changed throughout the different generations. In the same way, there are distant differences between the technology-driven eras versus other generations, especially between the diverse work styles, expectations and career perspective of younger and older workers. Much less, today’s younger generations such as Generation Y, Millennials, and now the future Generation Z children. The problem with these younger generations is the fact that they are creating an infamous perceiving reputation about them in the workplace. Above all, Millennials are comprised of more than a quarter of the world’s population. Two thirds of them, used computers before the age of five.

One of the main contributing factors of their poor behavior is that Millennials are constantly around technology, social networks and cellphones. In particular, these generations are creating a new wave of evolution with technology, telecommunicating. More importantly, the world of computers and information technology has become such an important aspect of today’s generation. For that matter, millennials are literally changing history in how they receive information and mass communicate. They are connected 24/7 to friends, family, information, the media, social networks and entertainment, which has created a segregation with older generations.

In fact, the most significant impact on communication is the growth of the internet and the ability to send e-mails, online chatting and the vast amount of social networks. Not to mention, while the internet has also increased its speed, computer has played a key role in the human’s yearn with social connection. With the immense amount of knowledge at our finger-tips, it has significant helped to improve the ways, people communicate. In particular, the invention of the mobile phone, has assisted to make communication easier by allowing people to communicate from anywhere in the world. The possibility of high quality communication from anywhere in the world to anyone, at low costs has led to a drastic marked decline in face-to-face communication. In addition, increases in the dependency of verbal and written communication, such as text messaging and instant messaging are now through the use of electronic devices for that “real-time” information.

In like manner, the ease of assertion and the spread of interactive communication methods such as instant messengers and video conferencing have increased the volume of communications, but reduce the average length of statements in conversations. The communication timing of the different generations, have drastically changed. From the Baby Boomers, it used to be people speaking to friends and family members on a longer term basis. On the other hand, it has become an instant, almost too constant routine with the Millennials. With regards to, the new era of instant messaging, a new form of communication has developed especially, on a multi-communicating level. Today’s assertion has become more limited in the face-to-face communication and phone conversations versus the newer age of an era with the creation of text messaging, blogging and instant messaging. These days, companies need to introduce more of a blended form of communication technologies in their workplace.

Unquestionably, there is a clear generational gap in many work environments; there is a need for an entire institution P-to-O expectancy on each individual level with every employee. If the majority of the staff members participate in this motivational theory, then there will be a higher probability of the majority of the staff utilizing each other’s assets, the company’s blog as well as meetings and training sessions among the staff members. For instance, the Millennials could help the Baby Boomers by training them on blogging on the company’s website. Equally, the Baby Boomers will train their younger colleagues about proper face-to-face manners in the workplace. To insure all colleagues are well adjusted to the changes, training sessions as well as utilizing meetings such as future search. With this in mind, it can help everyone prove a better insight on the future changes as well as, being on the same page about the new changes in sharing information and knowledge.

Nevertheless, an expectancy theory needs to be instilled for the Baby Boomers to attend the training seminars on the organization’s daily blogging and for the Millennials to have limited use of their electronic mediums. Noticeably, the Millennials are on these electronic devices more than they should be, that is why limiting their time to a designated area, such as their cubical or office for a certain amount of time per each work day. Instilling this, should help especially, when meetings are present so they are not actively on their devices. It should also help motivate the staff members, in their own personal ways to come together on the same social norms. A major disadvantage to this expectancy is that it desperately needs to have the upper management’s help to enforce the training sessions on a regular basis. If not, then there is a high possibility that the employees will just fall back into their comfortable routine if they do not have an enforcer. On the other hand, Millennials are making their own mark and are making it ingrained.

Some of their strengths that they have to offer are: optimism, able to multi-task, technologically savvy, comfortable with diversity, innovative, resourceful and collaborative. Granted, the Baby Boomers’ assets are: hard workers, adaptive, competitive to one another, successful, ambitious and open to changes and equality. However, the organizational structure is becoming increasingly segregated. A more effective resolution would be to apply more concurrent engineering. Humans have a natural bond with other humans that they have similarities with. In the work environment, age and gender are obvious factors of these natural groupings. By creating a more blended work environment, such as creating a rotation of temporally random teams to work on projects for the company, will help with the concurrence of team building and respect. Employing this method would help with the organization of the employees from different types of departments into a provisional team, whom then can collaborate on the diverse levels of communicating. In any case, there are few significant downfalls in establishing this method.

For the purpose of, having an eclectic age group of employees work together in agreement helps them create their own team-based organizational structure. Through leadership, initiating the facility to productive discussions, keeps the team on task. Upper management and the human resource department, play a key role in encouraging the team members to contribute as a team in the particular activities and meetings. Assisting the team members, with constructive analyzation of the many different opinions can also help conclude to a final consensus of any external or internal environmental factors. For example, job specification can helps with the productivity of work efficiency including short task cycles and costs of training are very low. If the division of labor is not instilled then in most instances, the majority of the workforce will just engage in their own comfortable settings and interaction with fellow peers. In final analysis, in a blink of an eye, the workplace is dramatically changing forever.

Technology is forever, always changing and there is no way it can be avoided. It is highly doubtful that this technology advance era will ever be returning back to traditional methods. Technology has changed communication systems in complete ways. It has also drastically, brought down the cost of messaging as well as improves people’s access and ability to employ it. For instance, many companies have begun to recognize new communication technologies as an important investment for creating a new paradigm for the workplace environment. One particular reason, is because this is a powerful and effective assertion that will help motivate the majority of the employees contribution to the companies’ financial success. Assessing the variation and availability of all organizational- friendly forms of communication can help instill a more efficient sharing as well as knowledge platform of communication technologies.

Bibliography
Goldsmith, Jeff. The Long Baby Boom:An Optimistic View for a Graying Generation. United States: The John Hopkins University Press, 2008. Howe, Neil and Strauss, William. Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation. New York: International and Pan-American, 2000. Lyons, Sean T. and
Schweitzer. Managing the New Workforce: International Perspective on the Millennial Generation. United Kingdom: Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc., 2012. McCrindle, Mark. New Generations at Work: Attracting, Recruiting, and Training Generation Y. Australia: McCrindle Reaseach, 2006. McShane, Steven L. and Von Gilnow, Mary Ann. Organizational Behavior: Emerging Knowledge, Global Reality. New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin, 2013.