Rebecca Showerman

By now many of us have seen the report done by Cisco that says over half of young people value Facebook and smart phones over salary. There has been a lot of conversation around this study and at The Pulse Network the Inside Marketing team decided to look into the study further.

I personally think that the blog posts about this study are misleading. The study shows that younger generations value technology. The study was not just about using social media and smart phones at work, but also the ability to work from home. The idea of Workshifting is nothing new. In fact many companies are going this way. Younger generations do value freedom, technology, and quality of life over salary, and you can ask most HR professionals who can tell you that most people, regardless of age, value many benefits over salary. If you just Google ‘work-life balance’ or ‘what do employees value’ or any search term on this topic and you will see a whole bunch of articles and blog posts about this subject going back almost 10 years. I think we are just seeing a shift in what benefits are valued. It used to be health insurance and FSAs, now that those benefits are required. To Gen Y (and much of Gen X too) benefits are now about technology and freedom. I think to understand these results fully it is critical to understand generational differences. At the O.C. Tanner Executive Summit in September, Tom Carrol from R.R. Donnelly and Sons gave an EXCELLENT talk on this very topic (and if you have time to watch the video I highly recommend you do so!)

Tags: Blogging, Cisco, Facebook, Gen Y, Google +1, LinkedIn, millenials, O.C. Tanner, Social Media, Twitter