Seven children
Goodness knows I feel young but with seven kids around the house, I know I’m not.
It’s nothing to do with anything physical – I’m quite sporty and can keep up with my teenagers kicking a ball around the garden for, oh, a few minutes at least!
But when it comes to culture - and in particular tech - well, that’s where I really feel the difference.
Again, I’m technologically oriented compared to many of my peers. But the Internet Generation is something else entirely.
They use platforms I’ve never heard of. They talk with emojis entirely naturally and half their online lingo is completely inaccessible to me (deliberately I’m sure).
And it’s changed the way they function. A large portion of their social lives takes place on various apps. Their attention span has decreased, and nothing will convince me otherwise: if something doesn’t interest them, they’re off reading about something else. And if it’s not online, it doesn’t count.
Now, if you have children of your own, I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.
But here’s the thing. Much of this applies not just to young children, but to adults in their 20s and 30s as well, many of whom are your employees.
Online employee engagement ideas
They, too, like accessing information online. It feels more natural to them.
They, too, like their information in bite-sized chunks. They, too, want information faster, quicker, in one place, now.
And yet, when it comes to workplace pensions (and probably quite a bit else besides), we insist on communicating with them as if nothing’s changed - as if none of that internet revolution has happened or is relevant in the workplace.
Your younger employees throw them a glance, maybe even leaf through them. But they never read them properly and never internalise a word they say.
It’s just not as interesting when it’s on paper, and it’s not interactive.
Employee seminars? Long and dreary for someone who is used to spending 24 seconds on a website before switching over to something new.
Or perhaps you send broadly the same messages about workplace pensions to most of your staff.
These outdated employee enaggement ideas often feel irrelevant to a generation which is used to accessing completely personal social media feeds and being shown ads which are tailored specifically to their interests.
It’s no wonder that people in their 20s and 30s don’t engage with pensions, when we don’t speak to them about it in a way that is geared to them.
So how can you engage your younger employees? And not just engage them, but get them to change their behaviour so that they become convinced to start saving more at an earlier age?
Maybe you’re still sending out wordy workplace pension scheme brochures.
That’s why I believe that we need to start talking to our employees about money, pensions and savings in general in an entirely new way – one that is super-practical.
And that’s why we’ve started producing a magazine for your employees about money and savings, all of which relates back to real life. The aim is to give people the tools to make better financial decisions – not just lecture them about it.
Check out one of our recent articles.
And if you’d like to discuss how your employees can get their hands on one of these magazines,
Topics: Employee Engagement
