Millennials and subsequent generations have a distinctive perspective on technology. Known as “digital natives,” millennials grew up with the internet and experienced the explosion of digital devices, social networking, and mobile applications. This generation, born between 1981 and 1996, also saw the rise of new ways to interact, communicate, and work online, including software-as-a-service, instant messaging, and now, tools for remote work.
Today, millennials remain some of the biggest users of technology. Nearly 95% of them own a smartphone, which they unlock an average of 63 times per day, and about 80% of millennials use social media multiple times each day.
With so much of their time spent online, millennials have high expectations when it comes to user experience (UX). They expect easy-to-navigate user flows and a mobile-optimized experience without unnecessary clicks. If your software platform or application is clunky, hard-to-use, or dated, millennials will start looking for the digital door. And that can have negative effects on your ability to hire and retain both millennial talent and loyalty.
Millennial workers demand a seamless candidate experience
Major economic shifts have resulted in layoffs and trends like the Great Resignation are making it difficult to find, hire, and keep high-quality workers.
Millennials are in the thick of it all, making up the majority of the modern workforce. Despite stereotypical depictions of millennials as young and inexperienced, most members of this generation are well beyond entry-level age. The oldest millennials are nearly 40 years old and have moved up the corporate ranks into senior leadership roles. In fact, 62% of millennials have direct reports, and nearly three-quarters of them say they play a key role when it comes to making buying decisions for their company.
This is all to say that millennials have the skills and experience many employers are looking for. However, to attract and retain millennial talent, companies need to provide seamless, streamlined online experiences. This includes the candidate stage, when potential hires make their first impressions of an employer. As a result, your candidate experience should be:
- Fully optimized for mobile
- Easy-to-use with minimal clicks
- Polished and consistent with your brand’s look and feel
- Intuitive to navigate
- Free from unnecessary logins or registrations
To get a better feel for a potential hire’s candidate experience, go through your company’s apply flow and note any areas of friction and poor UX. Also, remember that a positive employee experience doesn’t end once the offer letter is signed. Your internal portals, benefits sites, and employee hubs should be just as streamlined, intuitive, and well-designed as any other aspect of their experience.
Retaining millennial talent means giving them the right tools
Most millennials are dissatisfied with the technological tools they need to do their jobs. While these employees are unlikely to jump ship solely over unintuitive or clunky software platforms, it can certainly be a factor in overall disengagement or unhappiness with an employer.
For millennials, spending their day-to-day working with software solutions and platforms that make their jobs easier, not harder, is a must. And for those millennials who have a say in which digital tools to consider, purchase, or churn from, user experience will be the tipping point.
Today, millennials have the power to make buying decisions. This means that progressing to the kind of user experience described in the above section will no longer be questioned by the people making the decisions; instead, it will be driven by them. And any company still dragging its heels or stifling the drive toward modernization runs the risk of being left on the sidelines.
Future-proofing your EX investment
More importantly, even as millennials move into a position to disrupt what they don’t like, close on their heels is the next generation: young people who have never known a world without the internet, smartphones, and social media.
While millennials are “digital natives,” their Gen Z successors may well be “developer natives;” not only able to pick up and use technology quickly, but also able to code, program, and develop their own solutions. Individually and collectively, these folks will have no patience for adapting themselves to outmoded systems when they know more efficient, friendly, and functional options exist or can be built.
If your enterprise application strategy involves modernizing and mobilizing Workday, Taleo, or PeopleSoft, Skuid provides a future-proof solution that meets the exacting demands of today’s millennials, while providing a flexible platform for the fast, easy upgrades your next generation of employees will expect.
Learn how the city of Boston revamped its PeopleSoft employee experience with Skuid.
