When Bob Dylan wrote “Times, they are a changing”, even he hadn’t realized his unintentional prophecy would come true. Times are now changing faster than ever, and the rapid growth in technology has made many of the old work-concepts obsolete. With almost all the knowledge of the world at their fingertips, millennials work in ways that were unthinkable in the previous century. If stuck somewhere, they don’t postpone their tasks or go to the library or look up in a book or ask someone. They simply Google it.

But technology, and easy access to all the knowledge still does not mean that the productivity of an average employee has increased as much as it should have. These advancements, for no mistake of their own, have their own shortcomings. Astonishingly, even with all the communication tools now available, miscommunication is one of the biggest issues that industries face.

Personal connection with the employees is no longer what it used to be. Steve Woz, the other Steve, the one who built Apple-1 and Apple-2 on his own still calls himself the HP(Hewlett-Packard) guy. In contrast, ask almost any millennial how is their job going and if they share their secrets with you (sometimes even without that), they will tell you that they are looking for a change. Employers find that it’s getting harder and harder to keep the employees engaged. What has changed so much to result in such an attritional work culture? What can we do to motivate the employees, engage them and make them feel more relevant, more at home.

Want to understand how millennial brain works? Check out this infographic by Millennialmindset.co.uk –

Some millennial facts may give you more hints into their psyche -

Enterprise social network: An enterprising solution

Studies show that almost 9 0f 10 businesses nowadays have at least one social media page. It is an easy way to connect with the customers. But at the end of the day, who keeps the customers satisfied? Employees. So, it is strange that enterprise social networks, a platform for the companies to connect with their employees, is still a new idea. We have got 81% of US population on social media, billions of users worldwide, and yet, using the power of social media, the platform most used by millennials, to connect with employees is not used by most industries.

Enterprise social network -

/ brings your organisation on one platform.
/ connects the employees with each other and the employers.
/ helps in better management and sharing of information.
/ brings in more transparency in the organisation.
/ makes it easier to reward good work publicly, thus motivating the employees.

Such a network can, and should, be used as a knowledge sharing platform. It will help increase collaboration among the employees and different teams of the organisation. This will keep the employees more engaged and more connected with their organisation which leads to more productivity as well.

Employee motivation: A win-win factor

One of the biggest challenges that millennials face on their job is lack of motivation. We keep looking to make some impact, do something meaningful and challenging. These are not worthless goals, nor is this a nonsensical issue. Motivation is the key factor behind all that is good and well-done.

In the above example, the manager can not keep going to every developer trying to make them realise that their work is important, else they would not have been hired to do it. One of the biggest challenges that employers face while working with the millennials is their lack of motivation. Enterprise social networks make it easier for the employers to share the details of the project with the team and it helps the employees to look at the whole picture instead of just their task and thus truly appreciate their task and hence the job.

Employee engagement: The Blue whale in the room

What does lack of employee engagement cost? According to a Gallup study, it costs $450-$550 billions every year to American businesses alone. That’s like an Amazon turning into a Saraswati every year. Lack of employee engagement is an issue that needs to be solved, and an engaging enterprise social network is one of the best steps you can take towards solving it. Just the way customers are important for a business, so are the employees, or perhaps even more, as happy employees result in happy customers, but the other way around is not always true.

At Vinfotech, one of the world’s foremost developers of enterprise social networks, we have created seamless collaboration platforms for companies that have saved 40% of communication time and increased productivity by 20-25%.Thousands of hours of experience in building Enterprise social networks for clients across USA, UK and India have given us depth in this specific application development. We can help you bring all the different teams of your organisation on one platform and help them in sharing knowledge and increasing efficiency.

Want to build a knowledge sharing, collaborative platform for your organization? A platform that can be used to increase productivity, transparency and decrease loss of knowledge and time spent in managing emails? Give us a call.