The international research report, a collaboration between Universum, INSEAD Emerging Markets Institute, The HEAD Foundation and MIT Leadership Center, relies on 18,337 individual responses from 19 countries worldwide that had statistically relevant sample sizes. Here’s what they found.
1: Digital Capabilities
Plenty of working professionals say that a company’s digital capabilities are important. But less than half think that their employers are measuring up to their standards. Ironically, part of the problem is the workplace’s attempt to quickly add new technologies, the study explains:
2: Virtual Reality
All generations in the study except the Gen X respondents — older Gen Y, younger Gen Y, and Gen Z — said that they were anticipating the arrival of VR the most. Gen Xers prefers elearning programs by a slim margin. No word on the popularity of VR elearning programs. They may have a few years to wait.
3: A Flexible Workforce
Younger generations are more likely to be considering starting their own company to work on their terms, and freelancers are bigger than ever. Companies can’t offer a flexible schedule fast enough.
4: Training and Development
One big myth that companies should get over: Younger generations of workers don’t want online courses over in-person training. But training programs need to be tweaked: Global companies, for example, spent an estimated $356 billion as of 2015, but studies have revealed that a quarter of the time, employee performance isn’t improved, and a 2011 study even indicated 90 percent of new skills were lost within a year. There’s no easy answer to this one: Companies must simply re-evaluate their training courses with their specific employee demographic in mind.
In Short: The Nature of Work Is Changing
The impact of all these results is summed up in a quote provided by Vinika D. Rao, the Executive Director of INSEAD Emerging Markets Institute, who says: If companies hope to stay aware of their employees’ needs, they should check in on the above four areas. Image: WOCinTech
