Unlock the potential of your digital native workforce with a low-code rapid development platform

Soon, the new generation of educated workers will overtake the labor market—the digital natives. These are the people that have grown up with computers and video game consoles at their fingertips, and later mobile devices and social media.

In the next 4 years, they will make up the majority of your workforce. This generation expects consumer-grade experiences when it comes to HR (onboarding), IT (response times), and all the tools and applications that support them in doing their job. Besides digital natives being tech-savvy and tech lovers, they are also more entrepreneurial, less brand loyal and more self-reliant.

Particularly in large enterprises, the Employee Experience was never really a priority (didn’t have to be), which has left them with an IT infrastructure full of legacy systems and slow, complex and bureaucratic processes.

So, in order to stay competitive, organizations will have to start meeting the new generation’s needs. They can do so with a low-code rapid application development platform like ServiceNow.

What happens if you’re not ready for the digital natives?

If future employers fail to cater to the tech addiction of the digital natives, they will end up with a partially demotivated and frustrated workforce, affecting work productivity. It can even cause a huge drop in retention rates, as the digital natives will take their fresh energy, expertise and enthusiasm elsewhere or simply start their own business.

Plus, this new generation will also affect customers expectations, because you’ll be doing business with people that have high digital expectations and fewer patience than other generations.

Tapping into the self-reliant nature of digital natives

The good news is that these digital natives are very likely to be successful to solve tech problems themselves, given the right tools.

Digital natives are high-skilled when it comes to digital solutions, and have learned from a young age that if you don’t know how something works, there is always YouTube! They are very much aware of what a consumer-grade digital experience is, because they spend 41% of their free time with computers or mobile devices. Therefore, given the right tools, they can fix problems themselves, taking your organization through the next steps in the digital transformation.

What digital natives need to flourish

• A safe environment to share their ideas and a company culture that encourages continual improvement
  Establish a low-barrier mechanism that enables people to submit suggestions, ideas and improvements. The ServiceNow Idea Portal is a perfect example of such an application, which allows for pitching ideas, upvoting them and a process to follow up on them.

• A toolkit to quickly turn their ideas into usable solutions
  A no-code or low-code rapid application development platform (like ServiceNow) will enable these digitally skilled people to rapidly build solutions for any issues they encounter. With tools like ServiceNow App Engine Studio, they can easily build new business workflows and apps.

New generation of app developers

So, are all my employees below the age of 25 able to build applications now? No, of course not! But for most of them, it will be far easier than it ever was for the older generations.

All you need to do is give them some kick-starters and a bit of training. They will quickly understand how a low-code rapid application development platform works, and how to use it to make work more efficient and improve user experience.

With the right support and (self-service) resources, this new generation of app developers can even rapidly evolve into high-skilled app developers, capable of solving complex business problems at 21st century speed. For this reason, selecting a platform that can provide them with the right tools is key. Also, seeing the current shortage of pro-code developers in the market, a low-code rapid application development platform could be the next gold.

Keeping digital natives happy pays off

Digital natives will (soon) be making up the majority of your workforce. They are self-sufficient digital addicts with high expectations and an entrepreneurial spirit.

By providing your tech-savvy young professionals with the right tools and platform, you will enable them to turn their improvement ideas and frustrations into powerful solutions.

Meanwhile, you will keep them happy and engaged, and train them to become even more digitally skilled, providing your organization with the right resources to thrive in this fast-changing digital age. It’s a win-win situation.