Employing Net Gen-ers

07/01/2009

Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.
E.E. Cummings

In his book Grown Up Digital, reviewed in Work & Family Life (June 2009), Dan Tapscott offers the following guidelines for getting the best results from Net Generation employees (individuals born between 1977 and 1997).

Rethink authority. Be a good leader, but understand that in some areas you will be a student and that the Net Gen employee will be the teacher.

Rethink recruitment. Don't waste money on ads. Use social networks based on trust to influence young people about your company.

Rethink training. Engage for lifelong learning. Rather than relying on traditional training programs that are separate from work, look to strengthen the learning component of all jobs. One way to do this is to encourage employees to blog.

Don't ban Facebook or other social networks. Harness them instead. New tools like wikis, blogs, Twitter, social networks, jams, tele-presence, tags, collaborative filtering, and RSS feeds can be the heart of the new high performance workplace.

Rethink management processes. Design jobs and work for collaboration.

Put Net Gen-ers in the Driver's Seat. Involve them when you design workspaces, management systems, and collaborative working models.

Exchange Resources on Supervising Staff

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