How not to get stuck in the past. Millennials will account for 75% of the workforce by 2025

Many employers are stuck in the past when it comes to realising how technologically savvy the young are today.

The future is all about taking advantage of the digital knowledge that the millennials have. Focusing on the analogue can decrease the ability for growth in any industry. Therefore employers need to focus on using these savvy young employees to their advantage. Many young people already have the work-relevant skills needed but are not currently in the workplace. Telefonica UK boss Ronan Dunne says that millennials will make up 75 per cent of the UK workforce by 2025, but businesses aren't doing enough to engage them.

He goes on to make a point that “Digital literacy among our millennials is high, but in many cases our ambitions - reflected in our education system and by parents - are still analogue”. "Many of our most digitally literate in society are at risk of losing out as education and attitudes of employers change too slowly, while youth unemployment remains stubbornly high".

Now, you don’t all have to run out and learn everything there is to know about the digital world, however incorporating it into areas that have been traditionally analogue can help young workers with digital understanding enter the market with greater ease instead of applying the traditional last generation ethics.

Dunne further says “the workplace is changing and we need leadership, creativity, and education to provide the UK with the entrepreneurs and digital skills to create possibilities with technologies."

“We are just at the start of the digital revolution, driven by innovation in social media, devices, and operating ecosystems, where the possibilities of the technology rather than technology itself will reshape ourselves.”

“And the next wave of the digital revolution will be powered by mobile. After all connectivity is our oxygen.”

Something that is blatantly evident is that mobile is the key asset that almost every company can use to benefit in this digital revolution. Understandably change is hard but the digital era is something that everyone will eventually have to accept and understand that technology is built into the mind-set of millennials.

It is up to individual companies to decide whether they change their ways to embrace new technologies and give future generations a place to use their millennial experiences, or take the risk that the ‘tried and true’ will prevail.

The price of doing the same old thing is far higher than the price of change. --Bill Clinton

Read Ronan Dunne's full argument here