Mobile-friendly work environments needed to woo, retain GenZ workforce
by Mitch Young, SVP & GM APJ, ServiceNow
It’s a well-known fact that Gen Z-ers will soon overtake the Millennial generation as the largest cohort in the workplace, already accounting for 30% of the resident population in Singapore. They’re set to dramatically reshape our labour landscape and their impact on the workforce and economy will be significant. So how can businesses adapt their practices and strategies to attract and retain the future workforce?
To answer this question, first we need to identify the defining behaviours of Gen Z, because listening and responding to what motivates and drives the next generation workforce is critical to the success of any business.
Getting to know Singapore’s Gen Z workforce
- Gen Z workers are digital natives who weren’t taught cursive but can speed-type with their thumbs. Different from Millennials, they have never lived without smartphones, social media or ubiquitous Internet access
- They are ambitious, goal-oriented innovators who live in an ‘always on’ connected culture. This means they are less patient and want information fast! They are used to getting answers quickly and seek instant gratification and feedback from their employers
- Gen Z workers are more independent and want to achieve tasks by themselves and prefer working individually, as opposed to a team
- They are also more adept at dealing with disruptions as they are growing up in the age of rapidly-evolving digital technologies. Taken together, they could be a strong force of change and creativity
- They will retire at a later age than their older cohorts, and increasingly expect work to fit around their lives. They prefer flexibility and freedom rather than rigid rules – which means hot-desking, remote working and a desire to find meaning in their jobs
Companies need to fully embrace and adopt mobile transformation to effectively engage with Gen Z. For many young people, the first thing they do when they wake up and the last thing they see before going to sleep is their mobile phones. So, in a world where there are significantly more mobile connections than people, it’s critical that businesses make the future of work mobile-friendly. Mobile matters because employees now expect it.
Unlike our home lives, where mobile has made every day experiences simple and easy, finding answers and getting stuff done at work is still too complex. Employees are buried in approval requests, spend hours on the phone to fix a printer, and waste a lot of time looking for the answers they need from HR.
The next-generation workforce, who expect instantaneous answers and information, will not have the same patience as their older cohorts for these time-consuming tasks. Gen Z-ers seek a mobile-friendly experience, so they can one-and-done their work day, like we can tap two times for a mobile coffee order. It’s time we replaced mundane tasks with meaningful work.
To help do this, businesses need to focus on setting a new standard for a mobile-friendly employee experience. In order to truly unlock productivity, we need to move beyond traditional silo’ed applications and instead focus on modernising cross-department workflows to better match how our Gen Z workforce want to get work done.
It is crucial that organisations prioritise their transformation journeys. By utilising one platform that connects departments like IT, HR, facilities, and legal, businesses can hide the complexity of backend processes, meaning they can offer employees easy, on-the-go experiences at work. Essentially, mobile digital workflow solutions have the power to facilitate efficient work processes, wherever the employee may be working from.
This means we can now use mobile technology to seamlessly onboard new employees or deliver IT solutions that allow you to problem-solve at the click of a button. For example, at ServiceNow we are pushing the boundaries of mobile-led innovations for enterprises with our latest New York Release. Launched in September this year, the upgrade brings many firsts including the ability to request a password reset or report issues such as a faulty projector in a conference room with just a finger swipe.
New hires who previously needed to sign documents, pick out a laptop and complete tasks that span multiple departments before their first day can now tackle the onboarding process from the palm of their hand. Agents can now also use an app to get their work done on the go, whether out in the field or in the office.
These are just some examples of how digital transformation can heavily improve productivity. We live in a time where it is important for organisations to follow suit and embrace these technological advancements in order to stay ahead of the curve. It is important to offer a multilayered, fully-functional mobile platform designed to make using mobile in your work life as easy as using mobile in your personal life. By leveraging these mobile technologies to take care of task-oriented, repetitive work, employees can focus on the more creative, value-added aspects of their jobs.
Going mobile streamlines workflows and unlocks productivity
The success of our companies depends on instant information at our fingertips. Employees who don’t have access to mobile tools to get work done feel significantly less able to access the information they need. That leads to decreased productivity and engagement – two critical drivers that companies can’t afford to lose.
Digitally-savvy Gen Z-ers living in hyper-connected markets like Singapore want to be able to solve issues in just a few taps on their mobile devices. So, we decided to test our Now Mobile app for several months with our own employees. The results? It’s been giving back what every employee values most: time. We found that our employees freed up 60 hours of their time by getting more stuff done more quickly by themselves. Employee sentiment of technology increased by 10% and crucially, we learnt that departments delivering employee services via mobile have seen a 40% increase in productivity.
Ultimately, the future workforce belongs to a generation shaped by the smartphone, and to effectively engage with the younger generation, companies need to position themselves as a mobile-friendly work environment. Aside from boosting productivity, creating more mobile employee experiences can be a strategic advantage for companies trying to both recruit new talent and retain the people they already have.
It’s a well-known fact that Gen Z-ers will soon overtake the Millennial generation as the largest cohort in the workplace, already accounting for 30% of the resident population in Singapore. They’re set to dramatically reshape our labour landscape and their impact on the workforce and economy will be significant. So how can businesses adapt their practices and strategies to attract and retain the future workforce?
To answer this question, first we need to identify the defining behaviours of Gen Z, because listening and responding to what motivates and drives the next generation workforce is critical to the success of any business.
Getting to know Singapore’s Gen Z workforce
- Gen Z workers are digital natives who weren’t taught cursive but can speed-type with their thumbs. Different from Millennials, they have never lived without smartphones, social media or ubiquitous Internet access
- They are ambitious, goal-oriented innovators who live in an ‘always on’ connected culture. This means they are less patient and want information fast! They are used to getting answers quickly and seek instant gratification and feedback from their employers
- Gen Z workers are more independent and want to achieve tasks by themselves and prefer working individually, as opposed to a team
- They are also more adept at dealing with disruptions as they are growing up in the age of rapidly-evolving digital technologies. Taken together, they could be a strong force of change and creativity
- They will retire at a later age than their older cohorts, and increasingly expect work to fit around their lives. They prefer flexibility and freedom rather than rigid rules – which means hot-desking, remote working and a desire to find meaning in their jobs
Companies need to fully embrace and adopt mobile transformation to effectively engage with Gen Z. For many young people, the first thing they do when they wake up and the last thing they see before going to sleep is their mobile phones. So, in a world where there are significantly more mobile connections than people, it’s critical that businesses make the future of work mobile-friendly. Mobile matters because employees now expect it.
Unlike our home lives, where mobile has made every day experiences simple and easy, finding answers and getting stuff done at work is still too complex. Employees are buried in approval requests, spend hours on the phone to fix a printer, and waste a lot of time looking for the answers they need from HR.
The next-generation workforce, who expect instantaneous answers and information, will not have the same patience as their older cohorts for these time-consuming tasks. Gen Z-ers seek a mobile-friendly experience, so they can one-and-done their work day, like we can tap two times for a mobile coffee order. It’s time we replaced mundane tasks with meaningful work.
To help do this, businesses need to focus on setting a new standard for a mobile-friendly employee experience. In order to truly unlock productivity, we need to move beyond traditional silo’ed applications and instead focus on modernising cross-department workflows to better match how our Gen Z workforce want to get work done.
It is crucial that organisations prioritise their transformation journeys. By utilising one platform that connects departments like IT, HR, facilities, and legal, businesses can hide the complexity of backend processes, meaning they can offer employees easy, on-the-go experiences at work. Essentially, mobile digital workflow solutions have the power to facilitate efficient work processes, wherever the employee may be working from.
This means we can now use mobile technology to seamlessly onboard new employees or deliver IT solutions that allow you to problem-solve at the click of a button. For example, at ServiceNow we are pushing the boundaries of mobile-led innovations for enterprises with our latest New York Release. Launched in September this year, the upgrade brings many firsts including the ability to request a password reset or report issues such as a faulty projector in a conference room with just a finger swipe.
New hires who previously needed to sign documents, pick out a laptop and complete tasks that span multiple departments before their first day can now tackle the onboarding process from the palm of their hand. Agents can now also use an app to get their work done on the go, whether out in the field or in the office.
These are just some examples of how digital transformation can heavily improve productivity. We live in a time where it is important for organisations to follow suit and embrace these technological advancements in order to stay ahead of the curve. It is important to offer a multilayered, fully-functional mobile platform designed to make using mobile in your work life as easy as using mobile in your personal life. By leveraging these mobile technologies to take care of task-oriented, repetitive work, employees can focus on the more creative, value-added aspects of their jobs.
Going mobile streamlines workflows and unlocks productivity
The success of our companies depends on instant information at our fingertips. Employees who don’t have access to mobile tools to get work done feel significantly less able to access the information they need. That leads to decreased productivity and engagement – two critical drivers that companies can’t afford to lose.
Digitally-savvy Gen Z-ers living in hyper-connected markets like Singapore want to be able to solve issues in just a few taps on their mobile devices. So, we decided to test our Now Mobile app for several months with our own employees. The results? It’s been giving back what every employee values most: time. We found that our employees freed up 60 hours of their time by getting more stuff done more quickly by themselves. Employee sentiment of technology increased by 10% and crucially, we learnt that departments delivering employee services via mobile have seen a 40% increase in productivity.
Ultimately, the future workforce belongs to a generation shaped by the smartphone, and to effectively engage with the younger generation, companies need to position themselves as a mobile-friendly work environment. Aside from boosting productivity, creating more mobile employee experiences can be a strategic advantage for companies trying to both recruit new talent and retain the people they already have.
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