According to the World Economic Forum, millennials will make up 75% of our nation’s workforce by 2025. That statistic is important everywhere in the country, but in places like metro Atlanta, it becomes particularly important with our very low unemployment rate for technical and other highly skilled workers. Add to this the fact that businesses are moving here almost daily, and new ones are opening one after another. The talent base is in high demand.
If you are going to remain competitive for talented workers, especially those in virtually any field involving technology, you have to be prepared to give them the tools they deem necessary to do their jobs, including those that help your employees with working outside of the office. These are tools that a qualified managed IT services provider like DynaSis can provide you.
A recent article in Forbes showed that 87% of working millennials value the flexibility to work out of the office. If your talent isn’t allowed the flexibility to work off-premises at least some of the time, another company probably will offer them that opportunity. To accomplish this, they need to be able to access company data from their home computers, or even mobile devices, which is something that we here at DynaSis, a managed IT services provider, can accomplish for you in a cost-effective manner.
To keep millennials happy and keep them on the job, you need to prepare for them. Annecdotal reports tell us that they are far more likely to leave a job they don’t find truly satisfying than baby boomers who were taught that work wasn’t necessarily meant to be enjoyable…it was “work”. Typically, millennials have high expectations that many small to mid-sized companies may find hard meet, dangerously increasing the likelihood of turnover. If you can’t resolve this situation, you are apt to discover the best and brightest of your millennials seeking greener pastures.
So let’s take a look at how you can proactively deal with the type of situation, thus ensuring the stability of your workforce. If you are like most companies of this size, it is likely that you don’t have this expertise on staff so the engagement of a managed IT services company can be an excellent investment.
Step one to creating a workplace millennials will enjoy is establishing your current realistic technology position as a baseline, or, your starting point. A qualified, experienced managed IT services company can provide an IT and security assessment, usually on a complimentary basis, that will give you a clear picture of where your hardware and software are today, as well as a game plan to provide upgrades that will keep your people happy and efficient. The benefits of upgrading are numerous. You are allowing your people to be more effective and efficient, to provide better customer service, and enjoy their work days more, all of which lead to happier customers/clients, and strengthened bottom lines.
This type of assessment provides you with more than just a road-map to the future, you will also have inventories of all your equipment and software. You will see if you have equipment that is underutilized and you will see what equipment and software is out of support. You will discover vulnerabilities in your cyber security profile, and also discover newer and better ways to accomplish current tasks. You and your managed IT services provider can now begin to make intelligent decisions in developing realistic and dynamic plans for addressing the challenges of working with millennials. This assessment should also include reporting on the software you are using as well as the mobility and security of your entire IT network, as well as clearly benchmarking your network against current industry standards and trends.
By working with a reliable, experienced and reputable managed IT services company, you can use this information to plan for upgrades and improvements to allow you to meet the 24 x 7 x 365 access expectations of the younger members of your workforce, plus the collaboration tools that will make virtually every member of your team more productive. Your managed IT services company can also put together a cost effective plan for achieving these improvements over a timeframe that is financially acceptable to you.
And speaking of being cost effective, the right managed IT services provider will be able to include many, if not all, of these upgrades in a support contract that will provide your employees with 24 x 7 x 365 help desk support and field support, while usually keeping your IT costs the same as, or even lower than they are today.
One of the goals you should be looking at is embracing the use of mobile technology. For many companies, this advice may seem a bit outdated because who isn’t using mobile phones, laptops, and tablets? But true mobility includes the adoption of secure cloud based technology that allows the access we have been discussing, while also protecting your network, keeping your intellectual property, your financial records, your personnel files, and your customer data safe and secure. This is no small task and should involve expertise you will find with a quality managed IT services company like DynaSis.
Many forward looking companies that once frowned upon employees using their own devices for company work have accepted the fact that this is a growing trend and one that millennials embrace whole-heartedly. Simply put, they don’t want to carry two laptops and two smartphones. By offering partial reimbursement for the use of the employees’ devices, some companies have cut their own costs while providing a financial benefit to the worker. But a word of caution: these devices require the same high level of security as devices provided by the company. It’s vitally important that these devices are not only secured on a day-to-day basis, but can also be “wiped” clean remotely in the event of termination or resignation of employees. Again, this is something for the professionals at your managed IT services provider.
DynaSis is a managed IT services company, having provided these services for the small to mid-sized business community in the Atlanta Metro area since 1992. We provide complimentary IT and Network Security Assessments that will give you a clear picture into your current IT infrastructure and allow us to jointly create a plan to make sure you are fully protected while offering the latest mobile productivity to your employees. Contact us online or call us at 770-629-9615 for more information about how we can help your business attract top talent.