Net Generation and the Changing Office

With every new generation comes an increased technology savvy and evolving work approach. But the Net Generation – the first group of “digital natives” – is shaking up the office workplace such as no other age bracket.

 

It often feels like this group was born with cell phones and handheld gaming devices in their hands, and can’t imagine working without keyboard and mouse at the ready.

 

And these natural born techies see paper as archaic. This permeates their personal lives – try and find someone in their twenties who gets their daily news from a newspaper. They are also a prime audience for digital devices like Amazon’s Kindle.

 

Paper as archaic also extends to their work lives where they are as comfortable reading a document on a monitor as baby boomers are reading the same document in hardcopy. Paper in the workplace also strikes against the environmental instincts of this age group.

 

Industry researcher IDC says the Net Generation “feels that their companies have not yet adopted electronic processes.” This is a risky position for organizations that want to attract the best and brightest.

 

Here are three steps organizations can take right now to help the Net Generation thrive in the workplace – and contribute to their potential.

• Start the transition away from paper. Document scanning software can help you connect paper-based information directly into the applications that run your businesses. It delivers easily proven ROI – there’s no reason to wait.
  
• Look for software that enables staffers to work with electronic documents like they do with hardcopy information. Adding annotations, signatures, highlights, blackouts and whiteouts to scanned documents. Tapping optical character recognition (OCR) to create easily searchable text.
  
• Embrace the Net Generation as tech mentors in the office. This is a perfect opportunity where the students can become the teachers. Let them experiment in ways to drive paper out of workflows – and lead and teach the rest of the organization.

 

Comments

[office space]

Excellent entry! I'm been looking for topics as interesting as this. Looking forward to your next post.

Margarette Smith