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Kids stuff – what HR and Pension people can learn from Generation C

henry tapper

Driving home from cricket with Olly last night – we turned on the radio -“what’s that crazy music” I mumbled to myself

“James Brown , Payback  Dad – it’s 8 minutes long – do you want to buy it?”

“How do you know that Olly?”

“I’ve got an app”

Get home, turn on the computer – there’s a mail from my friend Matthew who’s out in San Francisco. Turns out he’s written a paper on Generation C. This is how it starts.

In the course of the next 10 years, a new generation—Generation C—will emerge. Born after 1990, these “digital natives,” just now beginning to attend university and enter the work-force, will transform the world as we know it. Their interests will help drive massive change in how people around the world socialize, work, and live their passions—and in the information and communication technologies they use to do so.
 
 
Having owned digital devices all their lives, they are intimately familiar with them
and use them as much as six hours a day. They all have mobile phones and
constantly send text messages. More than 95 percent of them have computers,
and more than half use instant messaging to communicate, have Facebook
pages, and watch videos on YouTube.
If you want a copy of this paper, you can donload the PDF here –  Booz & Co is a management consultancy not an off licence .
 
Matthew and Booz’s point is that kids  like Olly will inhabit not just the real world of football and school and college and work but a “cloud world” where he and 2-300 of his associates will hang out in a state of almost constant connectivity.
 
I say “will” though I think this has already happened for my son. He’s had an iPhone for nearly a year, he runs countless Facebook campaigns. As Head of the School Council he canvasses opinions on what his schoolmates want for dinner, timetable changes – even teacher performance.
 
He can speak authoritatively on how he and his friends feel about certain songs, videos, films simply by posting a question via Facebook.
 
We (I mean the HR and pension professionals who I work with) say we want to communicate with our staff – tell them stuff about pensions, get their views on HR matters, understand where we as business managers are going right or wrong.
 
We will be competing for their interest with a whole bunch of others trying to get some space on their cloud.
 
That’s why I think that “education” is the wrong word – we don’t educate kids like Olly, they educate themselves. All we can do is try to get the things we feel important in their line of sight.
 
In the battle to catch their attention we need to go to school to learn about  search engines and how to do this.
 
 
 
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