Tech-savvy Generation Y employees - are companies ready?

Gavin Olivier

Over the years, businesses and employees alike have had to adopt and adapt to the ever-renewing technology advances and trends, sometimes grudgingly and sometimes with awed excitement at the possibilities offered by these new trends. And, it should be safe to say that each new generation tends to adapt to these new technology trends with greater ease.

"Generation Y-ers, for example, have grown up with social media and are, therefore, far more attracted to social learning than the previous generation," said Gavin Olivier, partner and managing executive of LRMG.

He elaborated that this group actively seeks social context to help them make decisions and to learn how to solve specific problems. "These tech-savvy youngsters may also not be interested in traditional benefits and prefer access to learning and training at a time that's convenient, rather than having to be at a certain place at a certain time. Of course, this need is not exclusive to the Generation Y audience; however it is certainly more prevalent amongst them," said Olivier.

The way HR approaches learning

That said, it is therefore not surprising that innovations in technology have changed, and are changing, the way HR approaches learning. "The Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) culture and social media have completely redefined the learning landscape and more and more organisations are responding to these trends by offering their employees more flexible ways to learn. Mobile and social learning in particular are two of the hottest learning technology trends gaining prominence.

"With the social media phenomenon, social learning has become a big hit for businesses. Social learning enables HR to leverage expertise internally and externally to their company. It enables informal learning by giving employees the opportunity to collaborate and share knowledge on any topic, provide a richer learning experience, and improve knowledge retention," said Olivier.

He pointed out that social learning is not actually a new concept. "Albert Bandura came up with the concept in the late 70s. He claimed that people learn in a social context by observing, modelling and then being rewarded. For example, I watch somebody doing something. I like it, I try it, get rewarded and I repeat it. It is this concept that drives social learning," Olivier explained. "People more readily get to see what others are doing and, if they have the opportunity to model it successfully, will probably repeat the learned behaviour."

Always on the hunt

Another point to consider is the fact that mobile workers are always on the hunt for new information and that they use their mobile devices to get quick answers when they need an immediate answer, said Olivier. "We need to realise that the mobile worker is always connected, in fact, research shows that this 'linked in' attitude can mean that mobile workers, on average, work 240 hours more a year than desk-bound employees."

As impressive as these extra work hours sound, this 'linked in and BYOD' culture does provide a security headache for businesses. With employees always connected and using their own devises, how do companies and organisations regulate and protect and secure their confidential or sensitive information?

"The answer to the problem lies in creating a secure platform in which employees can collaborate and network," said Olivier. "The crucial issue for businesses is to ensure that, as a company, you can and do provide these collaborative and networking options in a secure environment. If not, because the technology exists and because we are dealing with very tech-savvy individuals, employees will find a way to perform the task they feel they need to perform on insecure systems or networks and, therefore, they may potentially expose your sensitive data."

Given the fact that most of the baby boomers worldwide are going to retire and be replaced by Generation Y-ers in the next five to seven years, organisations need to start making their learning and training systems and technology a core priority, said Olivier.

"Times have changed and learning has become people-centred rather than product-centred. I believe there are two questions organisations need to ask themselves. The first is: Are we ready for our tech-savvy Generation Y employees? The second is: Does the technology we have today allow for adequate and secure social and mobile learning?'

"If the answer to these questions is no, we can help and LRMG's solution offers a 'baked in', rather than an add-on solution incorporating social, mobile and informal learning that has been developed to meet this demand.

"The time has come to give people what they need, when they need it," Olivier concluded.