Attracting Top Talent: 3 Ways Office Tech Can Help

One of the most challenging issues facing companies today, especially those in the finance and technology industries, is recruiting and attracting top talent. Competition is fierce because today just about every employer needs people with technical skills and financial skills.

To complicate things further, attracting the best talent is only half the battle. It’s just as hard getting them to stay. According to research by Deloitte, nearly two-thirds of Millennial workers plan to change jobs by 2020. And by that time, they will make up half of the workforce.

The surprising part is, the big, established banks and tech companies aren’t always the ones winning the “war for talent.” Startups and smaller businesses are succeeding at attracting top talent AND managing to keep the most promising young people from jumping ship.

Why is this happening? Because today’s young people want more from their job than just a lucrative paycheck. They value work/life balance, modern working conditions and company values that match their own.

Believe it or not, you can actually help your organization with attracting top talent by providing office technology that supports what today’s job seekers are looking for in their work environment.

3 ways to tweak your work environment for attracting top talent

You might not be able to provide the quirky office features some of the tech giants have (foosball tables, office dogs and slides instead of stairs). But you can address the way your workplace operates and make changes that align with the values of Generation Z and Millennial workers. The good news is, it’s not expensive and can even save you money!

Here are some are simple ways technology can make your environment more attractive to younger workers and help with attracting and retaining top talent.

1. Enable mobility

Young people just entering the workforce have grown up with technology. They don’t even remember a time without cell phones. Attracting top talent from this generation (known as Generation Z) means providing a mobile work environment. The same is true for Millennials, who are slightly older but just as accustomed to relying on mobile technology. These workers don’t want to be tethered to a desk and an office phone. They expect to be able to work from wherever they happen to be.

This is an important reason why organizations are moving to laptops and tablets: they allow workers to work on the go. When attracting top talent is your goal, it’s what today’s employees want and you have to be able to provide that kind of environment.

But what happens when people need to print in a mobile workplace? Will you force them to print from a computer to a dedicated desktop printer?

Don’t forget about printing as you develop your mobile-friendly workplace. Here’s how to get printing to work the way today’s workforce wants to work:

• Choose shared multifunction printers that allow remote printing from smart devices.
• Enable cloud-based mobile printing services on your MFPs such as Box cloud services, Apple AirPrint, Google Cloud print. Your staff won’t even have to install apps on their devices because the solutions are built into (native) to the operating systems of their phones. These services make mobile printing available to anyone connected to the same network as the Box, Google Cloud or Apple AirPrint compatible printers.
• Use device-specific mobile print drivers, such as Canon’s PRINT Business. While this does require installing an app, users get quick and easy access to more printer functions, such as scanning and booklet printing right from their mobile devices.

Learn more: Office Mobile Print: Don’t Get a Copier Without It

2. Encourage collaboration

If you’ve been reading up on attracting top talent from the younger generations, you know they’re all about collaboration. They don’t want to work in silos. They expect to work with others, exchange ideas, learn from experts and make team decisions.

What does that mean for the workplace environment? You need to provide space for people to work in groups, as well as the technology to support collaborative work. That might include team “huddle” areas with electronic whiteboards, and team communication software such as Slack or Trello.

So let’s talk about printing again. If someone needs to print a document while walking to another building to meet a colleague, or joining in a impromptu brainstorming session in the cafeteria, they don’t want to have to walk back to an assigned printer near their desk.

How do you make printing convenient in a collaborative workplace? Set up a helpful feature called pull printing or follow-me printing, which lets people pick up their print job from any convenient printer.

Learn more: Follow-Me Print/Pull Printing: a Solution for Modern Workplaces

3. Practice sustainability

The younger generation is environmentally-conscious and they want to work for employers who share their values. If you’re committed to attracting top talent, you’ll want to demonstrate your commitment to reducing wasted resources.

Paper is a big one. How many times do you walk by the copier and see stacks of abandoned print jobs sitting there (and eventually dumped in the trash)? Reducing unnecessary printing not only saves trees, it also saves you money. More than you might expect!

It may sound difficult to get all your employees to cut down on wasted printing. Actually, it’s quite easy. And, if you have a modern Canon copier, you probably already have the software needed to do it.

• Set up rules-based routing. You use software to set up a series of customizable printer rules for your employees. For example, you can have printers default to double-sided printing to save paper.
• Set up user-authentication for printing, also called secure print. People enter a code or swipe their badge to retrieve their document from the printer. That means no more abandoned print jobs that waste paper.
• Set up printer usage monitoring so you can identify who is printing what, and let employees know you’re doing that. When they know you’re watching, your print volume will go down as people stop printing personal documents and pay more attention to doing the right thing.

Learn more:

Rules-Based Print Routing: The Easy Way to Cut Office Print Costs

Office Manager’s Guide to Secure Document Printing

That brings us to one more bit of helpful advice for attracting top talent. You’re going to need your IT budget for the electronic whiteboards and other modern workplace technology. So stop wasting so much money on printing! For starters, read this case study about a typical New York City business that took simple steps to save thousands every month.

Then, get a free office print assessment to find out how you can reduce your print expenses.