In the past, the challenge for OCM practitioners has been stakeholders who were comfortable with the status quo (no matter what its inherent problems were) and therefore were resistant to new processes or technologies. With the influx of Gen Yers to the workforce, this will no longer be the primary challenge. Gen Yers are “digital natives” and inherently early adopters for technology. The changes your project is implementing will now be viewed as not going far enough, not using the latest and greatest technology and therefore will be judged as lacking. Gen Yers will likely be impatient and frustrated with the tardiness of companies to acquire and integrate latest technologies more quickly into their infrastructure. The Gen Y resistance will likely manifest itself in end runs where users find technical loopholes to use those unapproved technologies they desire.
The current state of multi-generation workforce increases the need for targeted stakeholder analysis, the cross reference to their social currencies, and the incorporation of this analysis into specific communications. Even though everyone experiences change as an individual, projects have successfully been able to target communications to groups of like stakeholders. A multi-generational workforce with baby boomers to Gen Y will make this more challenging. The groups of like stakeholders may no longer be simply a department, team, or other organizational structure; OCM practitioners will need to conduct more due diligence on their impacted stakeholders and how they view the change and need to build in more flexibility into the messages and delivery mechanisms to build awareness of and desire for the change.
Similarly, in order to attract Gen Y workers, it is imperative for companies to build a technology savvy workforce, to leverage internal portals, social media and cutting- edge flexible software sooner than they often do today. Gen Yers will expect software that can easily be integrated with mobile devices like Blackberry, iPhone, Android, and the iPad. This will also be an expectation for new technology implementations that project teams and OCM practitioners will need to address.
