“Understand how the next generation communicates”
With Nigel Dalton, chief inventor at REA Group
If you interact often with members of Generation Z (those born between 1994 and 2000), you’ll know they speak a foreign language and update each other constantly. As they enter the workforce, the key is for companies to adapt to a generation that grew up with real-time communication.
Online real estate advertising company REA Group employs 1500 staff globally and has implemented different communication tools to facilitate closer working relationships despite geographical distance. Dalton says Gen Z has a greater desire for transparency, which will drive a shift to more open, channel-based ways of communicating, rather than email.
“These avid social media users may have sent a handful of emails in their life. They will expect the tech they use at work to be intuitive and offer them transparent access to information and colleagues in a seamless way,” he says. Gen Z workers have an almost morbid fascination with workplaces from a decade or two ago, admitting they don’t know how they would have coped in the traditional waterfall hierarchy of yesteryear.
REA Group is committed to hack days and inventor days, where 300 people across the company invent new ideas each quarter. This has brought the company more than 20 new ideas and inventions. The deliberate shift to a technology-enabled workforce has contributed to stellar growth; REA Group revenue increased by 22 per cent to $807.7 million in 2018.
“Work is more of a university-style place you drop into these days. The Gen Z employees want to use the same technology in their office that they do on weekends. These employees have grown up with iPhones in one hand and don’t expect to have to do any training to be able to utilise technology at all – it just has to work for them.”
Organisations need to ensure they’ve got digital support to survive in the corporate ecosystem, he says. “Our office has television screens switched on all the time and team members in China can approach the screen and have a conversation with the team in Melbourne. We’ve found that you need to remind people of etiquette and manners in the digital communication era. They need to understand that they are not to say anything in an instant message that they wouldn’t be comfortable saying face-to-face.”
More change is coming. Work will be something you do in virtual reality within three to five years. “Work won’t be about heading into an office but more a question of ‘which headset do I put on to get to my virtual workplace today’. We will be working with avatars, not actual humans, and navigating the delicate balance of face-to-face interaction with working remotely.”