Millennial Workers, the Unprovisioned

Monday, November 15th, 2010 John Gallagher, Sr. Public Relations Manager

Each generation gets its own share of press as they graduate with newly minted degrees and enter the workforce. And it seems that fairly or unfairly the new generation gets pegged with causing a major disruption in the workplace – a whole industry blossoms with advice about managing these young pups.

In fact a quick search on the term “millennial workers” will get you 1.2 million results – most offering advice like “Millennial workers do not understand the value of a dollar” and “Managing millennials who want too much.”

However, it seems this poor generation has also been saddled with disruptive technology super powers. Today’s young workers are supposedly the ones on the bleeding edge of technology and social media adoption and form the heart and soul of the consumerization boom that is rattling the IT establishment. A cross-generational chasm is forming in corporate America which makes great fodder for punditry and would be very powerful if it was indeed true.

We know that social media is aging… the median age of the Facebook user is 38 (older than a millennial) and the average Twitter user is 39. In this quarter’s iPass Mobile Workforce Report we found that the mobile worker is downright ancient at age 46. But we still expected to find generational differences … but surprisingly there were few, and they were mostly minor. For example, smartphone penetration is highest among mobile millennial workers … 90.6 percent. Significant until you compare it to the 35 to 44 year age group which is at 90 percent.

In fact, the biggest difference between the age groups was smartphone liability (who pays for the phone). Younger workers are less likely to get a corporately provisioned smartphone than older workers. We found the unprovisioned:

• Are less likely to use their own smartphones for work, although 66.0 percent do.
• Nearly half (45.7 percent) chose iPhones, not BlackBerrys

Considering that 70 percent of corporate data sits on unsecured mobile devices, we think IT should adopt mobile strategies that bring the unprovisioned, regardless of generation, into the fold. They will find that employees are less of a security risk, but more likely to use their own smartphones to get their jobs done – a win/win for everyone.

To download the November 2010 Mobile Workforce Report >> Click here

To view the newest video on Smartphones and Mobile Employees (and how they lose them!) >> View here

 

 

Tags: Android, Blackberry, enterprise mobility, iPad, iPhone, mobile employee, smartphone, survey