Seth Gottlieb, Content Here, recently turned me on to Sacha Chua and her blog.  Sacha is an Enterprise 2.0 consultant and application developer for IBM and she also happens to be a very good blogger.  What makes her blog interesting, besides being well written, is her posts on corporate use of social technologies given from the perspective of her generation, the Millennials (latest hip word for Generation Y).

While some organizations are still debating about introducing Web 2.0 technologies to their employees, this newest generation now entering the workforce is likely to expect that such technologies are already available to them for use in their daily work tasks.  While the use of information technology is often viewed by companies in terms of staying competitive and a requirement for implementing strategic plans, the technologies are also increasingly becoming an essential tool for the human resources department.  If you're expecting to attract and keep bright educated Millennials such as Sacha within your organization, you then need to better understand how people in her work cohort are likely to process the work given.

"Scalet, senior vice president and CIO of Merck & Co., noticed
that as his daughter studied, she simultaneously listened to her iPod, sent text messages and browsed through pages of the Facebook social network.

"How she will work in the future will be very different from how we
work today," Scalet said. "She is going to expect [collaboration] tools
... to be able to work. What scared me is that we don't think that way
today as corporations. We think as baby boomers [about] this very
traditional, structured, formal [work environment].""

Complete Story found at ComputerWorld

"The sense of loss I feel about the decline of e-mail has less to do with how we communicate than with what
we communicate. The means by which we deliver a message affects its
content. While the rise of the BlackBerry has proven that e-mail can be
adapted for fast-burst communiqués, the medium is best-suited for
longer musings. As opposed to instant messaging, e-mail provides the
breathing room to contemplate what we're writing and express nuanced
thoughts."

Complete Story

Another Generation Y (Generation Next) in the workforce has been written.  This time the article is at Infoworld and titled, The Generation Gap Challenges IT Managers.

The gap is widening, with more workers stacked at both ends of the age spectrum. There are approximately 80 million Baby Boomers, those born roughly between the years of 1946 and 1964, and 70 million in Generation Y, born 1978 through the present, but only 60 million in the middle in Generation X, those born 1965 to 1977.

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That creates a cultural divide, as workers of different ages will generally hold different views of technology use and adoption.

To be honest, I still like my old paper on the subject, The New Workforce.

"Maybe there will be consequences for flagrant online exhibitionism as a way to climb the social ladder (or when their ladder-climbing reaches, say, the quest for elected office). Maybe there won't, and we'll be due for one Naked Generation after another into the foreseeable future. Or maybe the only real consequence will be the fact that when a more introverted younger generation asks us in disbelief whether people in 2007 actually did post their dating histories on the Internet for all to see..."

Complete Story

"A while back I wrote a post speculating about the collaboration technologies today’s college students will expect to use when they enter the workforce. I guessed that today’s collegians will want to continue their use of social networking tools on the job—that they won’t consider these tools to be only suitable for ‘play time,’ but rather as important (integral?) parts of their day. More recently, I wrote a couple posts about Facebook, the social networking site that’s become wildly popular on many college campuses and is now penetrating the rest of society. "

Complete Story

The New Workforce: Generation Next (Generation Y) in your Organization

4. Recommendations

Organizations are beginning to take note that a new generational cohort is entering the workforce. However, even articles and publications that discuss differences in contemporary work cohorts often fail to make a distinction between Generation X and Generation Next (see Kogan, 2001 for example). As the number of Nexters continue to grow and make their presence known, organizations are likely to realize the generational changes taking place. The earlier cited strategy + business article noted that "if consulted these young employees (Nexters) can be an enormous force for positive change and success in their companies. If ignored, they will doubtless spend their brain cycles on the job plotting how to make their own work lives, not their companies better". Those businesses that respond positively to the traits of the new generation will likely succeed. Those who do not positively respond to the Nexters, but instead continue with their pre-Nexter culture may face failure.

Zemke (2000, pp. 146 - 147) offers a number of suggestions with how best to manage Generation Next. Among some of those suggestions are:

The New Workforce: Generation Next (Generation Y) in your Organization

3. Organization Scenarios involving Generation Next

Technology and Generation Next

While it may be early in the Nexter's careers to determine the full impact they are having in their place of employment, the presence of Generation Next is already causing changes within organizations. Observations can be made to how members of different generations in the labor force react to the introduction of new technology. As an IT professional and member of Generation X, the author has observed that when new technology is introduced into the work environment: