This is the first article in a three-part series about shifting age demographics in the workplace, the journey toward digital transformation, and what it all means in the Modern Workplace.
The terms, “age demographics,” “digital transformation” and “modern workplace” have been used so many times to mean so many things that, on some level, they can mean almost anything you want them to in any given business context. We are at a rare moment in time, a perfect storm where all three of these things, each huge on their own, are coalescing to create a major change imperative in business…perhaps nothing this significant has happened since the dawn of the industrial revolution.
Any meaningful (and successful) change in how things are done has to focus on people, process, and technology, with a focus on people first and foremost. While any one of those three things can be the catalyst for change, not paying attention to the complex interaction among all three will ultimately limit the success of any change initiative.
This major change is what motivated the writing of this series. I want to try and clarify what these terms really mean for business, and why the imperative to act on them is now. In this first article, we’ll focus on shifting age demographics and the impact that is having on business.
Let’s start with some thought-provoking statistics:
Millennials and GenZs are also known as “digital natives,” people who have grown up in a world where technology (laptops, smartphones, watches, social media) has been an integral part of their lives since early childhood. Whatever it is that they want or need to do, “there’s an app for that!” and the way they navigate their personal lives is far different from the way their parents navigated theirs.
Digital natives have decidedly different expectations of their work environment, too. Far more than in the previous generation, today’s workers expect flexibility[2], both professional and personal development opportunities, and an employee experience that sees them as whole persons, with cares and concerns that stretch beyond the workplace. It’s hard to imagine someone in their parents’ generation interviewing a potential employer to determine whether they actually wanted to work for that company, rather than just hoping that they’d impress that employer with their skills and experience and land the job.
Those in my generation, the generation that came of age before Millennials, and the generation that comprises the senior leadership of most companies today, are called “digital immigrants.” We’ve had to learn and progress with the rapid evolution of technology, whereas digital natives have never known a different way of doing things. Fluid contextual communication, collaboration, and transparency in business were a holy grail that was, more often than not, just out of reach in my generation, but it is table stakes for digital natives. “Knowledge is power” has given way to “Power is about influencing others and working together with them effectively.”
Let’s look at what has happened in a mere 20 years. In 2001 (when I was in my 40s),
Today, a worker who is in their 40s lives in a very different world.
This consumer behavior that digital immigrants have had to adapt to is the default way in which digital natives orient their behavior in business. In a pre-pandemic Gartner survey of 750 B2B customers involved in the purchase of complex solutions, those surveyed reported spending only 17% of their total purchasing time interacting directly with sellers. Rather, their purchase activity consisted of independent learning online (27%), independent learning offline (18%) and building consensus across a wide range of internal (22%) and partner stakeholders (11%). The 17% of their interaction with sellers (in-person and virtually) was the amount of time they allocated to all sellers, not each one. So, a little quick math…if they were considering, say, three suppliers for the solution they wanted to purchase, then each seller, at best, would get just under 6% of their allocated buying time.
These changes to how business is done began about a decade ago, as Millennials and GenZ’s began entering the workforce, but they were accelerated to warp speed by the worldwide COVID pandemic. Beginning in late 2020, working remotely was no longer a nice-to-have for those who wanted to do it once or twice a week—it became the only viable way for knowledge workers to do their jobs. And it took some companies a little while to get on board. One very recognizable social media company initially announced a policy that would allow employees to work remotely if they’d had exceptional performance reviews in the previous year! At the beginning of the pandemic, companies experimented with remote work solutions—in retrospect some approaches were tone-deaf and others complete failures.
What are the implications of all of this for business? Any meaningful (and successful) change in how things are done has to focus on people, process, and technology, with a focus on people first and foremost. While any one of those three things can be the catalyst for change, not paying attention to the complex interaction among all three will ultimately limit the success of any change initiative. If you change technology or a process without thinking about how it’s going to change the way your people work, and potentially even how their roles change, you’re likely to suffer significant losses in productivity and morale, and increasingly, employees.[3] If you change a process without considering the impact on your people and technology, again, your success will be limited. If you change your people (their roles, your expectations of them, and so on) without thinking about how your business processes and technology will support them, your initiative will likely fail.
In Part 2, we’ll look at digital transformation…what it really means, how well most companies are doing on the journey, how Covid has accelerated cloud adoption, and the danger of being driven by rapid technology adoption without focusing on the necessary changes for people and processes that are required for success.