Meanwhile, Alsop added in an interview that Capital One Financial is creating internal discussion boards and its own version of Wikipedia in an effort to improve worker collaboration. And Ernst & Young has developed a guide to help managers interpret IM shorthand.
Long & Foster Real Estate is facing demands that IT help Generation Y agents market themselves on social networks, noted Mayur Raichura, vice president of information services. The young workers are also seeking the ability to create YouTube-like online video presentations that can be easily spread across the Web, he said.
Long & Foster is now evaluating different services that could be used to support those requests, Raichura said.
Paul Wright, IT director for education in the State of Missouri, said that almost half of his 58 employees are part of Generation Y, requiring him to focus squarely on embracing new technologies to retain them and recruit more.
For example, the state last year a launched virtual job fair program in the Second Life virtual world to attract talented Millennials for IT slots. The program, Wright said, has already netted some quality hires.
Next month, Wright plans to meet with colleagues in other state agencies to discuss ways to expand the use of Second Life to other agencies.
The state using the Facebook social network as a recruiting vehicle, he said.
Wright noted that the use of Web 2.0 techniques paint the state's Department of Elementary and Secondary Education as technically savvy while providing an inexpensive method of reaching out to potential workers across the world.
Wright said his unit is now considering requests for IM access.
"Being a state entity we have to be very careful of the data we collect," he noted. "Anything [like IM] opens us up. We need to be extremely careful that we're not opening a hole that someone could hack into and get some data that we're responsible for."
Wright and other IT managers noted that one of the most defining characteristics of Millennials is their desire to constantly learn new skills and to have access to bleeding edge technology.