We now live in a multiplex world of many voices and ideas, mediated by the internet. At the forefront in using digital technology is the e-learning industry.
I’d forgotten about that.
That is to say, I’d forgotten that I had written those sentences until my quarterly copy of T&D Magazine came through the mail the other day. Included in the magazine was a short article I’d contributed to the publication on workplace training, e-learning, and one of the challenges organizations are about to encounter.
Recession notwithstanding, the PlayStation Generation (Digital Natives, Millennials, Generation Z: pay your money and take your choice) is beginning to enter the workforce, and the trickle of people will grow to a flood over the next decade. These workers will test the skills and expertise of training professionals in ways never encountered in the past, and quite unlike the demands the current economic unpleasantness is making on L&D people.
Like other generations, the PlayStation Generation is "shaped by the events …and trends of its time" (McCrindle, M., 2008). In particular, the emergence of internet-based technologies and synchronous communication systems including e-mail, txtng, and IM, as well as new media used through websites like YouTube, and the (ever-growing) range of social networking sites and influence of the Read/Write Web seem to be a characteristic of this generation’s reputation for intense peer orientation and their desire for instant gratification.
In their 2008 text, Connecting to the Net.Generation: What Higher Education Professionals Need to Know About Today’s Students, Reynol Junco and Jeanna Mastrodicasa found that in a survey of 7,705 college students in the US:
- 97% own a computer
- 97% have downloaded music and other media using peer-to-peer file sharing
- 94% own a cell phone
- 76% use instant messaging and social networking sites
- 75% of college students have a Facebook account[18]
- 60% own some type of portable music and/or video device such as an iPod
- 49% regularly download music and other media using peer-to-peer file sharing
- 34% use websites as their primary source of news
- 28% author a blog and 44% read blogs
- 15% of IM users are logged on 24 hours a day/7 days a week
(I think it’s time to use the quote from my article – don’t you?)
It’s clear that we now live in a multiplex world of many voices and ideas, mediated by the internet. At the forefront in using these digital technology is the e-learning industry.
To meet the challenge of workplace generational diversity, L&D professionals must embrace the knowledge that change is coming, look to the training tools and technologies that already exist, and be prepared to embrace innovation in organizational learning. Understanding the demographics of the 21st Century workforce should influence future training techniques; if you’re smart, you’ll be developing training strategies and approaches already.
Some approaches to consider:
- Understand the importance of the peer group
- Incorporate viral marketing or word-of mouth/ referral strategies into learning.
- Use an anecdotal style / storytelling to engage learners
- Use scenarios, risks, and consequences to develop skills build cognitive awareness, and likely outcomes to events. Dealing in theory, raw data, or pure statistics will not motivate this group of workers to learn.
As the 2008 US presidential election demonstrated, everyone from GenX onwards is technologically savvy (if not quite literate) and think nothing of accessing trends and movements online. They are not inclined to hang around for traditional, authoritarian leaders (or trainers) and the government (or company) to tell them what to do; they have decided to "get on with it."
I predict that one of the consequences of the current economic crisis is that many older employees will choose to leave or be forced out of the workforce. Here in Ireland we’ve already seen unskilled and semi-skilled people losing their jobs by the tens of thousands, as both they and the firms they work for have problems adapting to the new economic reality.
This story is unfolding all around the Western Hemisphere.
The chances are that the industries that supported these people will go to low cost base economies and will never return. The older, Baby Boomer generation-aged manpower than supplied these businesses will be hard-pressed to find full-time work in the same economic sector again.
If, as an L&D professional, you fail to adapt your training strategies to the needs of the new, diverse workforce, start planning a career change, because you might find your skills as relevant as those of other obsolete professions, such as chimney sweeps, match girls, gurl hurriers, and stagecoach tilters: the workplace of the future won’t hang around for if you can’t adapt to its requirements.
________
References:
McCrindle, M. (2008) The ABC of XYZ: Generational Diversity at Work. McCrindle Research. [Internet] Available from: http://www.quayappointments.com.au/email/040213/images/generational_diversity_at_work.pdf Accessed 10 May 2009.
Junco, R., & Mastrodicasa, J. (2007) Connecting to the Net.Generation: What Higher Education Professionals Need to Know About Today’s Students. NASPA.
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