Millennials on Both Sides of the FI’s Transactions

You put dye in water to see where it flows. At first, you see concentrated color and movement. Over time, the dye disperses and is no longer distinct, but it has altered the color of all the water. Like dye in water, millennials are entering the workforce, are flowing right now into tech-related jobs, and very soon will be everywhere.

Today, most organizations are strategizing about millennial customers—their likes and dislikes, how to engage, preferred channels—but ignoring what millennial workers are like, and what that means for them.

Millennials won’t just be your customers, they will be your workforce. And they are going to change everything. Here is some information that breaks down what’s coming, and that I hope will help you plan to successfully attract millennial talent. According to Forbes and other sources, millennials will:

1. Force companies to be transparent. Millennials don't trust CEOs and politicians, especially as they are portrayed in the media, because they don't feel like they are honest. Millennials want to create an honest and open culture, with no barriers between workers at different levels. As social networks penetrate the workforce, this will help open companies up even more.
    
2. Choose corporate culture and meaningful work above everything else. Meaningful work is important to 30% of millennials but only 12% of managers. Furthermore, only 28% of millennials feel that high pay is important, compared to 50% of managers. Millennials want the work they are doing to have an impact on their co-workers, on their manager, and on the company at large.
    
3. Build a collaborative organization. Millennials like to work on project teams to accomplish goals. They care less about the company they work for, and more about who they work with and the types of projects they do.
    
4. Recruit based on results over degrees. Most large company HR filters sideline those without degrees for many jobs. (Millennials are graduating with $45,000 in debt, and that number keeps increasing.) However, millennials care more about achievements than educational level, and as leaders, will recruit based on results.
    
5. Want to work from Home. The number of Americans working from home has jumped 41% to just over 13.4 million over the past ten years, according to Money.  While some employers still hesitate to allow this, Gallup reports that remote workers log more hours and are more engaged than their office-bound counterparts. An Odesk study found that 92% of millennials want to work remotely and 87% want to work on their own clock instead of a 9 to 5 workday.

I personally know many millennials who say they would rather work from home than receive higher salaries, and who are perfectly comfortable being dispersed, yet highly-connected through the technology they already use. As an example of organizational adaptation, the Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM)—a non-profit professional organization that champions technology and workplace trends—is practicing what it preaches by announcing that all their work will be done remotely next year.

Here’s some more help. At the 2017 Alogent Conference last month, product management presented the direction of our Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Suite in the upcoming year (FASTdocs v.6.0), which highlights the need for features and functionality that will support the changing demands of the millennial workforce. A specific case in point is Alogent’s data center release of ECM (Alogent Cloud). Although a data center delivery option is convenient for some financial institutions, ECM can also support a remote workforce. The millennial workforce in your future.