Productivity tools, employee engagement, collaboration and mobility are business concerns and requirements that are undergoing a major evolution. New technology is a factor but the greatest redefinition and changes are as a result of the changing nature of the employee. In 2015, Millennials passed Generation Xers as the largest represented generation of workers. Represented by 53.5 million workers (Pew Research Center), more than one in three American workers are a Millennial (18 to 34 years old). This increase requires businesses to change the way business tools and processes are evaluated, selected and applied if they wish to maximize their potential and return.

A recent example for me was the deployment of an eLearning solution that used metadata to search for topics and related courses. No amount of explaining the benefit of metadata could get the boomers away from the more traditional folder or indexed manner of organizing materials. Ultimately, we rolled out both to meet the needs of the daily users (the Millennials), and the aging boomers (senior management). Metadata is far superior to the older more familiar folder/indexing systems because it allows users to gather documents that are specific to the current need or search criteria. It does this through consistent classification, sorting and filtering of information. In simple terms, Metadata brings transparency and clarity to information. And while there are some benefits to organizing information using traditional folders and indexing, such use is inconsistent with the way the largest generational segment of the workforce conceives, views and uses information on a daily basis.

Another example of changing the way we look at information can be found in Microsoft Office 365. While Office 365 does support folders and traditional Office tools, it also offers One Drive for Business, Microsoft Office Online, SharePoint and Yammer to support collaboration and internal social networking. However, a less well known product within the Office 365 family is Delve.

Delve is more likely to be adopted by Millennials than Boomers as it supports the discovery of information that's of interest to a user across Office 365 at a given point in time. There is no need to know the title of a document or where it's stored. Delve is focused on content and presents documents no matter where they're stored in OneDrive for Business or in Sites in Office 365. Document permissions are not changed or overruled so users only see documents to which they have access.

When colleagues view, edit, and share each other's documents, Delve learns and tailors the information to each and presents it to a personalized Home page. Each Delve Home page is different and unique to a user. In fact, Delve learns what content users interact with, the individuals and groups they work with, active documents, utilized platforms, and Yammer conversations. Overall, Delve improves the user’s experience with Office 365.

Microsoft continues to improve Delve with the recent addition of the concept of Boards. Boards provides the ability to easily tag content or “pin” it to a Board that can be shared with others who, in turn, can also pin items to the Board.

CloudRoute recommends that businesses wanting to maximize how Millennials learn and work would do well to acquire Office 365 and embrace Delve. Boomers would do well to try it and demonstrate that they too can continue to learn new things.