Millennials are everywhere.
According to a PwC report, by 2020, more than half of the workforce will be made up of millennials. By the time we hit 2025, that number could easily jump to 75% – leaving us with nowhere to hide from the new generation.
The numbers suggest that companies from almost every industry need to start thinking about how they can empower and support those 18 to 35-year-olds in their organisations. Fortunately, the rising popularity of Unified Communications as a Service could address this issue.
As younger employees continue to crave easily-scalable, innovation-rich and naturally mobile solutions for communication and collaboration, UC in the cloud is the obvious way forward. Here are just five ways that you can attract and retain your millennial talent, by switching to a UCaaS strategy.
1. Create an Always-On Technology Culture
You’ve probably heard the term “company culture” thrown around quite often in the modern recruitment environment. That’s because today’s employees want more than just a salary from their boss – they want to feel at home in their work environment.
Millennials were born and raised in an always-on and constantly-connected environment. That means that if you want to create a space that appeals to these youngsters, you’ll need to stop focusing on buying the latest and greatest communication hardware and start looking into strategies that can evolve with the ever-changing needs of your users.
UCaaS solutions are naturally-scalable tools that provide millennials with endless information, ready to access at a moment’s notice. With UCaaS, millennials can enjoy the benefits of connecting with their colleagues as quickly and efficiently as possible, with the flexibility to choose how they’d prefer to communicate. There’s no waiting for things to be installed, loaded, or updated by the tech team. UCaaS is always up-to-date, and always ready.
2. Move Towards the Omnichannel
Speaking of choosing how they want to communicate, millennials don’t want to be restricted to a certain mode of connectivity. UCaaS is designed specifically to foster better communication and collaboration throughout the professional environment, with solutions that span many communication types, all the way from video and voice, to instant messaging and text.
Millennials have a reputation for preferring short and consistent real-time communications over long emails or time-consuming phone calls. UCaaS can enable SMS and IM solutions to adhere to this preference. In fact, the omnichannel nature of UCaaS doesn’t just make it great for a millennial team, but for a multi-generational workforce too. As the office environment continues to take on a range of new and old generations, there’s bound to be a range of communication preferences for leaders to handle. UCaaS means that everyone gets to connect in the way that works best for them.
3. Empower Millennials with BYOD
Just as millennials don’t appreciate being told which kind of communication to use, they don’t like any restriction around the devices they use either. As complex as BYOD might be from an IT management and security perspective, it’s something that many millennials want. In fact, one study into mobile security and BYOD found that almost half of all respondents had a BYOD strategy in place.
UCaaS gives millennials more freedom over the devices they use while ensuring that they’re still taking advantage of the right technology to keep systems secure, and data protected. Implementing a Unified Communications as a Service solution means that users have access to all enterprise UC services, from voice, text, and audio, to web conferencing, on the same simple interface – no matter which device they use.
4. Allow Flexible and Remote Working
As mentioned at the beginning of this article, the trend for remote working is growing.
Many businesses have begun to offer flexible working arrangements for their employees, providing the ability to work from home, cafes, or even on the move as millennials pursue their dreams and travel the world. Millennials among some of the most likely workers to telecommute, and UCaaS systems ensure that companies can make remote working an easier option from a tech perspective.
The nature of UCaaS ensures that remote workers will be able to access the same high-quality services they’d use in the office, from the comfort of their own home. All they need is an internet connection and the right hardware, and they’re ready to go.
Additionally, UCaaS connectivity ensures that experts can collaborate with their colleagues at a moment’s notice, with just a tap or click. Anyone, from experts halfway across the globe, to people down the hall, can connect on the same video-conferences, dial into voice calls, and collaborate with screen sharing solutions.
5. Create a More Engaged Workforce
Finally, let’s face it – millennials aren’t the only people left gritting their teeth when they’re facing a constantly buffering page or struggling with lost connectivity. To prevent your workforce from entering a state of despair, you’ll need to make sure that you have a network strategy in place that provides absolute continuity, with disaster recovery measures in place.
Cloud-based unified communication systems can automatically route data and calls in a way that helps to minimise packet loss, jitter, and other problems for your most important conversations. Thanks to the high resiliency and reliability of the cloud, you can make sure that your entire workforce (not just the millennials) stay engaged and productive – no matter what happens.
Embracing UCaaS and the Millennial Workforce
As complex as it can be to support and empower a new workforce, like the millennial generation, UCaaS has quickly emerged as one of the best solutions for any size of enterprise.
With UCaaS, your newest workers will be able to unleash their creativity and knowledge on the world, and you won’t have to worry about restricting what your older employees can do either. UCaaS isn’t just the solution for the future of workplace agility; it could also be the perfect partner for the multi-generational professional environment.
