The generation gap in the workforce is the widest it’s been in history. With people living and working longer, many companies employ workers from across five different generations. Google Cloud Search offers everyone a familiar experience.
What are the different generations in the workplace?
- Traditionalists (born before 1945)
- Baby Boomers (born between 1946 to 1964)
- Generation X (1965 to early 1980s)
- Millennials (early 1980s to mid ‘90s)
- Gen Z (mid ‘90s to early ‘00s)
This age disparity comes at a time when businesses are more digitally connected than ever. Although it might be easy to make assumptions based on a person’s demographics, giving any kind of pass can jeopardize business outcomes and performance. No matter how digitally savvy the worker is, ensuring that all users are working together within your technology landscape is the best way to contribute to your organization’s success.
Business Trends Call for More Collaboration
Most organizations are seeing all or some of these trends:
- Content is growing exponentially.
- Content sources, or the places people search for the information they need to do their work, are also growing, whether organically — or through mergers and acquisitions.
- Knowledge workers, also known as “interaction workers,” are the fastest growing class of workers in North America.
- Workplace demographics are changing.
- Much of an enterprise’s knowledge, or content, is “dark,” which means it’s not indexed or discoverable.
A McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) report found that if companies used more applications of social technologies such as cloud search technology, it would raise a knowledge worker’s productivity by 20-25% while improving communications and collaboration.
What matters to employees is getting the answers they need when they search for them. Time wasted on ineffective searches affects not only productivity; it can also make workers feel like they’re looking for a needle in a haystack.
Create a Sharing Mindset
Cloud Search technology is designed for sharing. It brings collaboration, responsiveness and agility to companies in a way that is familiar to workers. Cloud Search gives users what they are really looking for — and creates that intuitive experience employees have all come to expect from Google.
The onboarding process is a prime example of how Cloud Search makes it easier to find information new employees need to do their jobs. According to Bersin by Deloitte, the average company spends about $4,000 and 24 days to hire a new employee. Once hired, the onboarding process can add another $12,500 per year. New hires are the least likely to know where information is located. They aren’t familiar with your company's systems, nor do they know which colleagues to ask for help.
In fact, International Data Corporation (IDC) research found there is a high cost when people cannot find information — and when both new and existing employees spend exorbitant amounts of time searching for information in multiple repositories. IDC estimates that:
- 25% of an employee’s time is spent searching for data.
- 61% of workers access four or more systems regularly.
- 44% of the time employees can’t find the data they are looking for.
By offering a cloud search experience that matches a user’s intent, your company will save more than dollars and cents. Employees will be able to make better decisions, reduce duplicated efforts and security issues that threaten the enterprise — and increase sales and productivity.
Bridge the Divide
Cloud technology is the heart of the future connected workplace. Ensuring that all workplace users — whether digital natives, digital immigrants or digital exiles are ready is the key to transforming your business.
With familiar Google Cloud Search technology, your multigenerational workers will have an easier time finding what they’re looking for, and a search experience that moves your enterprise forward.
Want to learn more? Download our eBook, Five Ways Google Cloud Search Takes Charge of Lost Institutional Knowledge
