When we think of millennial attitudes toward the world of digital, we picture phone-toting men and women with their heads down, quietly tapping on their keypads. They’re using the internet to order from Amazon, request a ride from Lyft, make dinner reservations, find a date, read movie reviews and download apps for everything from the practical to the mundane.
Miroslav Sova, Y Soft
So when it comes to the workplace, are these youngsters as digitally demanding when it comes to their employer? Y Soft, a solution provider that enables organizations to improve productivity through print and document capture workflows, decided to find out. In August, Y Soft commissioned a survey of 100 employed individuals in the United States between the ages of 18 and 44 to seek their views on the digital transformation and their workplace expectations.
The wide-ranging survey was conducted through SurveyMonkey and serves as an indicator of what companies should know about how employees regard their company’s digital reputation while meeting the needs of millennial and early-stage career employees. Among the highlights:
- Sixty percent said their company did not have any policies regarding printing and 70 percent said there were no scanning policies.
- Despite a company’s belief that the digital workflows will make employees more productive, employees believe that scan-to-email is still a productive use of their time.
- More than 50 percent think their company has too many paper-based processes, and all of that printing has a negative environmental impact.
- Fifty-four percent are using cloud storage, whether company-owned or through personal accounts. Sixteen percent of those polled use their own storage, including Dropbox and Google Drive.
- Just 29 percent expect to use their mobile phone or tablet to print while at work.
Interestingly enough, when asked what factors millennials consider to be the most important when considering employment with a company, being fully digital scored the highest of the considerations, narrowly edging out the prospective company being well-known and established.
Mirek Sova, head of product management and product marketing for Y Soft, was surprised to see that 70 percent of respondents indicated their company had no scanning policies, especially considering the heightened awareness around document security and the tools organizations have available to them. The same percentage indicated there were no policies in place regarding how documents are printed.
“Either these organizations are not placing the same amount of concern they have with external network-related security breaches with how they manage internal breaches, or they have not communicated these policies to employees,” Sova said. “Either way, without print and scan policies, companies are leaving themselves vulnerable to document security breaches.”
That scan-to-email is still a preferred mode did not surprise Sova, because for the user, results are immediate and they feel in control. But users are missing out on how automation of the process can greatly simplify the scanning experience.
“In this sense, change can be difficult. But for repetitive processes or business documents, it is not efficient,” he said. “In many ways with regard to business documents, it is dangerous. Any kind of business document has some level of confidentiality or sensitivity. Scan-to-email makes it too easy for someone to send it to the wrong person internally or externally, accidentally or on purpose. We often hear of companies in court with accusations of former employees taking intellectual property when they leave, for example. Scan workflows provide an audit of what is being scanned and can assist in protecting a company’s assets.”
Sova added that by pre-defining and automatically sending the digital copy to an approved destination, the company protects its documents. Yet for the user, it is not much of a different experience at the multifunction device. Ideally, he said, employees involved in a paper-based process provide input on how a digital workflow will work and are trained on the final workflow. A deliberate choice to scan-to-email can still be available, but the employee is now aware that the activity can be monitored as part of the training.
A somewhat surprising stat involves the use of cloud storage, given that only 38 percent of employees have access to company-owned solutions, and 16 percent said that they use their own accounts. That raises another red flag from a security perspective.
“Use of cloud storage accounts are a necessity for business, but companies have been slow to adopt business accounts compared to adoption by individuals,” Sova remarked. “Automated workflows can deliver company digital documents directly into the business’ cloud accounts and know who performed the scan, so there really is no reason for personal accounts being used for business documents. The scan function—whether using automated workflows or the scan functionality on the multifunction device—can be tracked so companies can monitor and act should the need arise.”
The bottom line is that while millennials see the need for business printing, they feel their companies have too many paper-based processes and want them to be just as digitally aware internally as they may be externally. That such a high percentage professed no knowledge of company printing and scanning rules is also an indication that either employees didn’t thoroughly read their terms of use manual at work, or the edicts were poorly communicated.
