Promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Through Remote Work

,

In recent years, remote work has become a prevalent and transformative trend in the world of work. With advancements in technology and changing attitudes toward work-life balance, remote work has gained momentum as a viable option for employees and employers alike. Alongside this trend, there is a growing recognition of the importance of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in the workplace. DEI initiatives aim to create inclusive work environments that respect and value individuals’ diverse identities, backgrounds, and experiences. In this blog post, we will explore how remote work can relate to DEI and contribute to building more inclusive workplaces.

Accessibility:
One of the significant benefits of remote work in the context of DEI is increased accessibility. Remote work can break down physical barriers for individuals with disabilities, providing them with opportunities to participate in the workforce more fully. Traditional office spaces may pose challenges for individuals with mobility issues or other disabilities. However, remote work allows for flexibility in terms of the work environment, allowing employees to work from home or adapt their workspaces to accommodate their needs. This can promote inclusivity by providing equal access to employment opportunities for individuals with disabilities, fostering a diverse and inclusive workforce.

Flexibility:
Remote work offers flexibility in various aspects, including location, schedule, and work-life integration. This flexibility can benefit employees with caregiving responsibilities, particularly women who often bear a disproportionate burden of caregiving responsibilities. Remote work allows employees to have more control over their schedules, enabling them to balance their work and personal obligations more effectively. This can help promote gender equity by reducing the gender gap in caregiving responsibilities and creating a more inclusive work environment that recognizes and supports employees’ diverse needs and responsibilities outside of work.

Inclusivity:
Remote work can also contribute to creating a more inclusive work environment by breaking down geographical barriers. Traditional office-based employment may limit opportunities for individuals in remote or underserved areas to access employment opportunities. However, remote work allows companies to tap into talent from diverse locations and backgrounds, providing opportunities to underrepresented groups who may face barriers to traditional office-based employment. This can promote diversity by offering opportunities to individuals from underrepresented communities, fostering inclusivity in the workforce.

Work-Life Balance:
Work-life balance is crucial for the well-being of employees. Remote work can provide employees with the flexibility to manage their work and personal responsibilities, which can reduce burnout, promote mental health, and contribute to a more inclusive work environment. Employees who have control over their work schedule and location can better manage their personal and professional commitments, resulting in increased job satisfaction and retention rates. Remote work can support employees from diverse backgrounds in achieving a healthy work-life balance, promoting inclusivity in the workplace.

Employee Engagement:
Employees who have autonomy over their work environment, schedule, and productivity may experience increased job satisfaction and engagement. Remote work allows employees to have more control over their work style and preferences, resulting in a sense of ownership and empowerment. This can benefit employees from diverse backgrounds by creating a more inclusive work environment that respects and values their unique needs and preferences, leading to higher employee engagement levels.

Remote work has the potential to be a powerful tool in promoting DEI in the workplace. Through increased accessibility, flexibility, inclusivity, work-life balance, and employee engagement, remote work can contribute to creating more inclusive work environments where individuals from diverse backgrounds feel welcome. Organizations can harness the benefits of remote work to promote DEI by fostering a culture that values diversity, providing equal access to remote work opportunities, and accommodating diverse needs and preferences. By recognizing and leveraging the potential of remote work in the context of DEI, we can create more inclusive, equitable, and diverse work environments where everyone has the opportunity to thrive!

Mosaic Consulting Group Receives 2021 UKG Innovator of the Year Partner Award

,

Mosaic Consulting Group won the 2021 UKG Innovator of the Year – HCM Services Partner Award as a Certified UKG Partner. This award marks the fourth year in which Mosaic has received a Partner Award, most recently receiving The Partner Collaboration Award in 2020.

Mosaic has a lot to celebrate in 2021, a year where we have increased our focus on our client experience, our team experience and our close partnership with UKG. According to UKG this innovation award went to the UKG Certified partner who showed innovation in technology and in strategy. Mosaic’s application for the award mentioned a recent project completed by our team of UKG Technical experts for one of our long-term clients. The client team was seeking a way to pull data out of their UKG Pro system and write it into their Data Lake. The client wanted to marry data out of UKG Pro with data from other systems to provide visibility to their executive team. This allowed them to make fully educated decisions, build a strategy, and continue to move their business forward. The uniqueness of the request came in the form of the type of data the client wanted to extract from UKG Pro – any and all of it. The Mosaic team got to work and built an automated process that leverages API calls to retrieve Cognos BI Report XML data and subsequently transform this data into SQL objects that are then stored in the client’s Data Lake for downstream use. This flexibility allows for a highly optimized process, providing quick access to information and allows the visibility that the client’s executive team can then use to conduct their holistic strategic planning.

Vicki Hill, CEO says “This is just one example of how we make a difference for our clients and build confidence in their UKG products. I know that each of our team members have a similar story where they’ve guided, anticipated, and exceeded our client’s expectations. I’m so proud of our entire team and our accomplishments.”

Now More Than Ever, We Need to Focus on Our Team

,

Employee retention has become the newest topic of serious discussion and scrutiny in boardrooms (or zoom calls) across the country. Companies are asking HR teams to focus on ways to combat the current labor shortage and prepare for what is being called the “Great Resignation”. HR Professionals are left with the difficult tasks of not only finding new employees quickly, but also finding new ways to keep them on staff. I believe that the secret to this, is a true focus on your team.

Throughout the years, Mosaic has published multiple articles on how important the employee experience is for businesses. From building a culture by design, to amplifying the employee voice, Mosaic has always emphasized listening to your team and caring about them on a human to human level. For many companies, including Mosaic, the COVID-19 pandemic held up a magnifying glass to employee experience efforts. In August of this year we heard back from our team, burnout had made its way across our organization and was affecting our team’s lives and their ability to provide the exceptional client service we strive towards.

I knew that we needed to find a short-term way to reduce burnout and, more importantly, a long-term strategy to keep our focus on our team members front of mind; especially for me and my executive team as we made business decisions. As a short-term solution, we held our first ever companywide mental health day of rest. We then began to work on a strategic solution to focus on our team, provide a great employee experience and recruit and retain top talent. This is a big task, and I know it will take us time to establish a strategy that solves the challenge at the source, but it’s important to start building one today. As we covered during our recent webinar and article on using technology to manage the labor shortage, the global pandemic has given employees a clearer understanding of what they want out of their jobs, and what types of careers they want to pursue in the long run. This means that to retain, recruit and engage the top talent we want on our team, we need to be the type of place they want to be a part of.

Now more than ever, we need to focus on our team and give them a workplace where they can bring their whole selves to work, a place where they can learn, grow, and make a positive impact on our client’s lives. I want Mosaic to be a place where team members want to be and feel inspired. This led me to the decision to promote Krystyn Sadler, our Vice President of People and Culture Warrior to President of Mosaic Consulting Group. As a strong HR leader Krystyn has proven to relate to and connect with our team as well as our clients. She understands the business and the importance of employee engagement for our success. I am so proud of Krystyn and her new role. Krystyn has been dedicated to our team’s culture and engagement since day one, over four years ago. In Krystyn’s own words: “I believe that a focus on our team, their experience and well-being, results in a better experience and better results for our clients” We cannot wait to see how Krystyn continues to be an agent of positive change and growth for Mosaic. As President, Krystyn will work closely with our team ensuring our day-to-day initiatives are running smoothly and keeping the team experience, which is so near to her heart, top of mind. This will allow me, as CEO, to focus on strategic initiatives to continue moving our business forward.

Mosaic has already benefitted from this decision and focus on the employee experience. In the month since we announced our company wide mental health day of rest, we’ve had an overwhelmingly positive response from employees and clients alike. The silver lining to these difficult times is the potential for a more empathetic world and this empathy should stretch out to our teams, clients and entire networks. I am excited to partner with Krystyn to make sure that we continue to grow Mosaic as a best place to work and a rapidly growing company with a strong focus on team experience. I invite other business owners to do the same.

Mosaic Consulting Group Introduces Companywide Mental Heath Day of Rest

,

Dear Reader,

Every year the entire Mosaic team gathers in Nashville for a three-day company meeting meant to be a time for our team to learn new skills, grow and spend time with each other. I look forward to this meeting every year. As a company, 2021’s meeting has a special meaning to us because it is the 10th anniversary of our founding and because we had to cancel the event in 2020. With the current situation as is, the Mosaic executive team was faced with a difficult decision.

This year, our meeting was scheduled to take place from August 31st to September 2nd . Our team had the option to attend online or in-person due to COVID-19 conditions. As the date approached, leaders in our organization brought forth some concerns they heard from our team members. At Mosaic, we pride ourselves in listening to our team, so three weeks before the event we sent out a company-wide survey to offer our team the opportunity to tell us, directly, what they were feeling. The results did reveal some concerns among our team about the health and safety of the event. The survey also revealed an underlying burnout and anxiety that the team had been experiencing the past few months.

Trying to navigate a pandemic, new or different working conditions and caregiving, in addition to global unrest across the world would exhaust anyone, our team is no exception. With this in mind, my executive team and I went to work looking into ways to combat burnout and increase our long-term focus on mental health and the overall health of our people.

Our first initiative was to postpone our in-person meeting to next year and move this year’s meeting to be a fully-online 1-day event. Our second initiative is to implement a companywide, Mental Health Day of Rest, which will take place this coming Friday, September 3rd.

We understand that this is just the beginning, and my team and I will continue to find ways to combat burnout on a year-round basis. Our hope in these decisions is that they will help prioritize mental health for our employees and empower them to ultimately bring their best selves to work. We believe that a focus on our team results in a stronger focus and better results for our clients. To our clients, thank you for understanding and partnering with Mosaic in this decision. To our employees, thank you for working hard every single day to make Mosaic a better place.

Mosaic Consulting Group Appears on the Inc. 5000, for the 4th Consecutive Year

,

NEW YORK, August 17, 2021 – Inc. magazine today revealed that Mosaic Consulting Group is No. 4,872

on its annual Inc. 5000 list, the most prestigious ranking of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies. The list represents a unique look at the most successful companies within the American economy’s most dynamic segment—its independent small businesses. Intuit, Zappos, Under Armour, Microsoft, Patagonia, and many other well-known names gained their first national exposure as honorees on the Inc. 5000.

“We are so excited to be on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies for the 4th year in a row. This achievement is especially meaningful with the difficulties of 2020, and I am just so proud of the Mosaic team, their hard work and perseverance has really paid off.” Says Vicki Hill, founder, and CEO of Mosaic Consulting Group.

Not only have the companies on the 2021 Inc. 5000 been very competitive within their markets, but this year’s list also proved especially resilient and flexible given 2020’s unprecedented challenges. Among the 5,000, the average median three-year growth rate soared to 543 percent, and median revenue reached $11.1 million. Together, those companies added more than 610,000 jobs over the past three years.

“The 2021 Inc. 5000 list feels like one of the most important rosters of companies ever compiled,” says Scott Omelianuk, editor-in-chief of Inc. “Building one of the fastest-growing companies in America in any year is a remarkable achievement. Building one in the crisis we’ve lived through is just plain amazing. This kind of accomplishment comes with hard work, smart pivots, great leadership, and the help of a whole lot of people.”

More about Inc. and the Inc. 5000

Methodology

Companies on the 2021 Inc. 5000 are ranked according to percentage revenue growth from 2017 to 2020. To qualify, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by March 31, 2017. They must be U.S.-based, privately held, for-profit, and independent—not subsidiaries or divisions of other companies—as of December 31, 2020. (Since then, some on the list may have gone public or been acquired.) The minimum revenue required for 2017 is $100,000; the minimum for 2020 is $2 million. As always, Inc. reserves the right to decline applicants for subjective reasons. Growth rates used to determine company rankings were calculated to three decimal places. There was one tie on this year’s Inc. 5000.  Companies on the Inc. 500 are featured in Inc.’s September issue. They represent the top tier of the Inc. 5000, which can be found at http://www.inc.com/inc5000.

Mosaic Consulting Group Earns 2021 Great Place to Work Certification

,

We are proud to announce that we are officially Certified™ by Great Place to Work®. The prestigious award is based entirely on what current employees say about their experience working at Mosaic. This year, 87% of employees said it’s a great place to work – 28 points higher than the average U.S. company.

Great Place to Work® is the global authority on workplace culture, employee experience, and the leadership behaviors proven to deliver market-leading revenue, employee retention and increased innovation.

“Culture doesn’t just happen. It must be developed, nurtured and maintained in an intentional way – especially when majority of your workforce is remote, behind a screen, in their home…” said CEO and Founder, Vicki Hill.

Our Mosaic culture thrives because of our people. Culture is exemplified by the way we treat each other and our clients. At our core, we value Teamwork, Own It, Do the Right Thing and WOW! We are 100% remote and stay connected through our weekly huddles, Slack, Zoom, coffee breaks, All Hands meeting and social hours.  We also come together once a year to Nashville for our internal conference, which is coming up in August!

“Great Place to Work Certification™ isn’t something that comes easily – it takes ongoing dedication to the employee experience,” said Sarah Lewis-Kulin, vice president of global recognition at Great Place to Work. “It’s the only official recognition determined by employees’ real-time reports of their company culture. Earning this designation means that Mosaic Consulting Group is one of the best companies to work for in the country.”

Culture by Design: Keeping Culture Alive With a Remote Workforce

,

Culture doesn’t just happen. It must be developed, nurtured and maintained in an intentional way – especially when majority of your workforce is remote, behind a screen, in their home or home office, or possibly sitting in an airport while traveling to a meet a client.

Remote work has become increasingly popular in the United States with the rise of technology and new ways of staying connected and sharing information that are as efficient (and sometimes more so) than traditional offices and boardrooms. Companies are able to share information seamlessly, transmit data with the click of a button, share screens, chat over instant message, and connect with one another from nearly anywhere in the world.

Fast Company reported in February 2018 on Upwork’s Future Workforce Report, “Many of the 1,000 hiring managers surveyed said that they expect up to 38% of their full-time staff will be working remotely in the next decade.” Fast Company went on to say: “Currently, 63% of employers have remote workers, yet a majority lack remote work policies.” A written policy may not be necessary, but it is important to establish norms and be intentional about your remote workers’ experiences within your culture and connections to one another.

Not all remote work is the same – there are positives and challenges to the lifestyle. Remote work arrangements, when they first hit the work scene, were instantly alluring because of their novelty, the lure of greater work-life balance and a flexible work environment that seemed so desirable principally because of the words, “work from home.” For many of us, this conjured up images of working in pajama pants with a big cup of coffee, participating in a conference call from the location of your choice – a home office, the airport, or your car – and there was a certain sense of freedom, ease, even glamour, associated with having a “flexible” or “remote” work arrangement.

Connection & Culture

We now know that employing a remote workforce takes effort and commitment to a positive work environment and culture at all levels of the organization. Mosaic is proud of what we have learned about creating a thriving remote workforce – but there are always challenges to making sure that your workforce feels connected, engaged, and included. Maintaining a remote workforce with a kickass culture is a challenge, for sure. One of the primary challenges employees who work remotely cite is the feeling of isolation and being less of a “part of the team”.

At Mosaic, we strive to be the exception and maintain a strongly connected and centered team, regardless of where we all do our respective jobs. For us, this boils down to two things: our culture, and good communication. Here is a look at some of our practices that contribute to our connectivity:

Huddles

We touch base with each other regularly to talk about what we’re up to, what we’re stuck on, and what we need help with. Many of our remote team members tell us that it’s not simply the information shared, but the experience of being “in the room” virtually, and connected with the rest of our team, that makes them feel more a part of their team, and the company, when so many work in locations across the country and are in our Nashville office only a few times a year.

Video Chat

This is how we make our huddles happen, and many other points of connection throughout the day. We’ve found that our team prefers Zoom video chat over instant messaging. The personal aspect of seeing one another – no matter where you are – creates that human connection. We encourage everyone to “show their faces” for internal meetings; this reduces the intimidation factor and makes everyone more comfortable using this medium.

We encourage our team to have conversations that would have happened over the watercooler if we all shared an office building. It’s important to us to have these conversations as if we are physically in an office with our team – to connect when there is good news or difficult news. By doing this, we are able to better maintain that intimate, entrepreneurial, small-team family feeling, no matter how big we grow. I think it’s vital to know your team and know what they are dealing with and establish a relationship where you can coach and mentor, and this is one of the many things that I think sets Mosaic apart. Cheri, a Washington-based consultant, says, “Even though I work remotely, it is important for me to stay connected to co-workers to ensure I feel like I’m part of a team. One way I stay connected is scheduling short meetings to say hi and catch up on life. We share best practices and sometime have a glass of wine. While I am not in a physical office building, you can still have the same outcome by making simply efforts to stay connected.”

Work is life and life is work. Sometimes you are walking through a parking lot or sitting in a car when you join a call or you haven’t showered yet. There is grace within the team and within our walls. We trust that we all look professional as we go onsite or connect with clients, but our culture stresses being comfortable just being who we are with each other on a daily basis, and I hope everyone on the team feels this.

Having a conversation with a colleague over Zoom where you can see their facial expressions and body language helps us communicate clearly and understand each other better. Tricia, a remote Senior PAS team member in Tennessee eloquently described the value of Zoom when she said, “At Mosaic we choose to ‘assume positive intent’ of one another – with instant messaging you can sometimes misread inflection or intent. Zoom helps you maintain the assumption of positive intent because you are able to pair a colleague’s nonverbal cues with their words.”

Creative Workspace

Much like the “chat rooms” in the old days of the web, #Slack has become our place to gather (and from our climbing message stats, it seems like it’s taken off!). As most of you already know, we implemented Slack as a place to collaborate on projects with groups, to send group messages, or to launch video meetings. It’s the place we all meet up, and while the primary focus is work, we make room for fun, too. Encouraging a workplace where people bring themselves into the environment and share personal details, special moments, talents, and accomplishments, or just a good joke or two, reinforces the personal connection and makes our team feel like family.

Virtual Events

When our team does gather “in real life” – for quarterly or annual planning meetings or other company events – we’re able to pick up seamlessly because we “see” each other so often over Zoom and share information on #Slack.

Companies today must think outside the box. We learned as we outgrew the feasibility of flying everyone in several times a year for meetings and the annual holiday party, that we needed to take a creative approach to these events. We added virtual events, in addition to quarterly meetings and monthly All Hands Calls: our Secret Santa party, monthly BetterBookClub meetings, and more. It is this kind of celebration that connects individuals throughout the organization for a positive reason that has nothing to do with work that is extremely valuable. It provides the opportunity to connect and get to know one another. We are building grace equity in the relationship.

This year, I heard about a virtual happy hour that our Client Engagement team held. They all grabbed their beverage of choice in their home offices and joined a video conference call. Their “happy hour” turned into two-and-a-half hours of stories and belly laughs. I had a little FOMO when I heard about this bonding time for their team, but more than that, I was happy to see this team being proactive about connecting with one another as people who share experiences beyond office hours and routine work. They were embracing the culture and making it even better by prioritizing time to connect with their fellow teammates.

Our Wingman Program

We’ve all had the experience of joining a new company and thinking, “How am I going to learn all that I need to learn, and get up to speed?” You don’t want to ask what might be perceived as a stupid question, but you also want to connect and feel at home. Many of you have benefitted from our Wingman program at Mosaic or served as a Wingman yourself.

Some of you may not know that this program came into being organically, in sharing my own experience with a rock star consultant who had joined us and was struggling to adjust. Brian, a Texas-based consultant, was transitioning from a corporate environment to working with Mosaic from home. He had just left a position which involved a daily commute and a big office with fluorescent lights and people constantly milling about. Since I had been consulting for over 10 years already, I had disconnected from how difficult this transition could be. It takes time to adjust to life as a remote employee. Unlike a typical office environment, you can’t just pop your head into someone’s office to ask a question or ask a coworker something simple like where to find the benefits documentation you were given during orientation. These conversations would organically occur after morning huddle or in the break room during lunch. To the remote worker, asking simple questions that are necessary during the onboarding period feels like you are interrupting your boss or peer. Brian brought a wealth of knowledge and expertise to Mosaic, and his experience shined a light on a gap we needed to fill in our onboarding process. Our team stepped in and made time to support him. He eloquently described his transition to consulting life: “The way that the team scaffolded me allowed me to move forward and not worry about my inadequacies. They carried me until I could walk – and now I’m running!”

His experience exemplifies what we desire for each of our team members to find success as remote employees at Mosaic. We wanted all new team members to feel this way, so we created the Wingman Program which pairs each new member of our team with a peer who is dedicated to helping the new team mate acclimate. The wingman is a resource for all the questions that seem silly, helping the individual adjust, and being there for them as they settle in to help them feel connected.

Remote work as a consultant also requires a certain amount of self-management that is less common in some traditional workplaces. We expect consultants to self-manage many aspects of their day. They learn to juggle multiple clients, varying priorities and deadlines, and their workload on top of the personalities involved as well. The process of acclimating to this style of work takes time, and it can be different for everyone. The Wingman is a great resource for new consultants as they can learn first-hand how a peer juggles their day-to-day.

Celebrations and Acknowledgements

There’s something special about public acknowledgement of something that is important to you. It makes it real. That is why we record and remember our team’s personal milestones: birthdays, children’s birthdays, work and personal anniversaries. Our team understands that they are important. Run a marathon? Had a baby? Your child graduated from high school? We want to know it and celebrate it with you.

This is also why, during our monthly All Hands Call, we share the top company news and end with the open invite for team members to give one another a shout out and share their “Attitude of Gratitude.” This gives us an opportunity to thank one another, celebrate one another, and gas each other up. It is the most important part of that call. Publicly acknowledging what we are doing well in an open forum can never be overdone. It serves an additional purpose in allowing people who don’t frequently work with one another hear about what is going well in different areas of the organization.

You either have a culture by default or by design. And, to me, “by design” means more than just a few early team members setting standards for remote work nearly ten years ago. In order to sustain connection across a fast-growing organization, it takes a team that is fully engaged and bought into the rewards that come from the effort it takes to connect with one another. I am proud that Mosaic continues to stand out as a place of work that is committed to being a remote team of exceptionally connected individuals. I encourage you to continue to be creative and introduce new ways of intentional connection company-wide.

I firmly believe that remote workforces are not only here to stay, but a growing norm among leading companies. To attract the best talent and offer challenging and rewarding work, we must flex as to the location our team works from and give them ownership over the way they perform their jobs to meet company goals. But providing a “home base” for our team is critical: a culture they feel connected to, a work family, and an environment that makes it feel as if your co-workers are just an office away – no matter where they’re working from — and that is what makes our Mosaic team special.

Millennials in the Workplace

We all hear a lot about the impact of Millennials, right? They’re changing the way we recruit and hire, market ourselves, and do business. This is one influential group! And we have our share at Mosaic: did you know we have 16 Millennials – people born after 1982 – on staff? That’s 30% of our team! This surprised me – I didn’t realize our numbers were so high. And that’s a good thing.

I recently participated in an EO Think Tank in Nashville on Working with Millennials, along with business owners from a wide variety of industries. A few of the companies represented included professional services, healthcare providers, restaurants, retail, event and party planning, salon services, and more.

All of these companies had Millennials represented on their teams, some as high as 100% of their workforce. And their opinions and experiences on working with this generation were as different as night and day. Business owners talked about the challenges of recruiting, training, retaining and motivating these employees. Regardless of the industry we work in or the percentage of this generation on our staff or in our target market, it’s a common challenge we’re all trying to get our heads around: how do we engage this diverse and talented group who’s motivated by different drivers than those that we built our careers on?

I came away with a lot of interesting insights I wanted to share with you. Not everything applied to me or to our team here at Mosaic, but I thought the general insights of the group had value and wanted to pass along what I heard on to you.

Here’s what I learned:

You guys rock. (This isn’t news.) As you all know, Mosaic’s younger team members are highly creative, motivated, engaged, collaborative, and have a strong work ethic. And we love that!

You like to make a difference. Employees from this generation thrive in industries like professional services, insurance, wealth management, and home health care – serving others in a tangible way.

Culture and work environment are important. This group has high expectations when entering the workforce – as if every working environment should be Google-like with free coffee and laundry service (if only, right?)

Recognition and reward pays off. Significant progress in stature or pay is important. Unlike previous generations who were willing to put in the blood, sweat and tears for an extended period of time, a more immediate return on investment, so to speak, is important.

Show me the money! While those of us in Gen X and Y might have focused on planning ahead, retirement savings, and so on, Millennials are more focused on the here and now: making money, spending money, making more money, etc. – not thinking about retirement but more immediate life needs and wants.

Kinder and gentler. Millennials have been brought up to be much more liberal when it comes to politics and economics. This generation is more cause-driven than those that came before.

What’s in it for me? Although seemingly more tolerant, there also seems to be a sense of entitlement among this group. The recession in 2008/2009 had a big impact on this generation. For the first time in history, a highly educated generation entered the workforce carrying more school debt but earning less than the prior generation. Note to self: don’t enter the workforce during a recession!

Technology savvy. Millennials are very technology-focused. Many participants said that if they send an email to a Millennial, they’ll receive a text reply. In an effort to communicate more effectively, some are turning to apps such as Marco Polo and Slack.

We’re in this together. Group accountability is important. The success of the team and everyone pulling their own weight is important to this group. One organization uses Top Grading where everyone is peer-reviewed and the results are visible to everyone. A players continue working; B players are coached and trained up, and C players are let go. A and B players are very motivated by this approach and C players usually self-select out.

Be real. Lastly, the group talked about working with Millennials as customers and the challenges in connecting with them. Most reach millennial customers through social media but all agreed that the posts had to be authentic. For example, a self-made video appears to be more reliable and meaningful in reaching a Millennial than a polished marketing video.

Be relevant. We’ve got to reach this group where they live. Everybody does business on their mobile device. The Wealth Management Company uses an app to entice Millennials to participate in investing. Getting a Millennial to make an appointment to meet an investment representative in an office is impossible. But if they can decide on how to invest via an app, then they are much more likely to do it. Do you agree?

A little light reading, your e-mail in-box and more…

Finally, other observations centered on professional development and time management. In keeping with our focus on good books to broaden your perspective and grow your career: a participant recommended the book The 5-Hour Work Day, which is loosely based off Tim Ferris’ book, The 4-Hour Work Week. It talks about how top performers got the same amount of work done in 5 hours instead of the typical 8-hour day – and the hourly rate was inflated to compensate for the difference. In the time saved, employees got to spend their extra time doing other things. How cool would it be to be as productive in 25 hours a week as a 40-hour week – and get paid the same? And have that extra time to devote to the things that you love?

Another participant practices the 3 D’s in his company as it relates to emails: Do it, Delete it, or Delegate it. They have been practicing this for nearly two years and he has seen an increase in productivity and efficiency. I’m going to put this into practice myself!

Isn’t it amazing how a generation can change the way people think, hire, and do business?

I think this happens with nearly all generations in the workforce — but Millennials are definitely having a tangible and lasting effect, either because you’re encouraging all of us to shift our thinking or because you’re forcing all of us to focus on new ways of connecting, whether that means embracing new technology or new ways of relating to one another.

Either way, I’m thankful for our Millennial Mosaicians. You inspire us, challenge us, and force us to think differently. Your contribution to Mosaic helps us stay relevant and hip. And I love it when you teach some of us old dogs new tricks! By the way, does anyone know how to turn on Family Sharing on my iPad?

Carry on, you crazy kids!

Vicki