Customers, partners and employees choose to engage with companies that are relevant and speak the same language as them – but what makes you relevant to the generation that has everything?According to Dr Eugene Wessels, General Manager of Data Analytics and Marno Boshoff, Culture Evangelist at King Price Insurance, it’s a subtle combination of philosophy and technology that work together to capture the minds and hearts of millennials.
- Instantly update your status and talk the talk
As smart devices become, well smarter, the need for digital to interconnect, digitise and optimise the world of the millennial become greater. This generation believes in efficiency and reaches for technology to achieve it.
It’s a generation that does not want to be held hostage by their location, delayed processes or intermittent connectedness, but strives for real-time insights and results.
“We are working with a generation that’s instant; they want instant access, they are fast moving and they want to see a difference immediately,” says Wessels. “To quench this need, we launched an internal app that allows us complete real time line of sight of the business performance as it updates every five to 10 minutes. In doing so we can instantly see any changes that they make operationally – if you change something now, how it ripples through your key performance indicators of that particular day, tapping into this generation’s perceived need for instant gratification with information being available immediately at the touch of a button.”
King Price is also the first local business to launch Facebook at Work to improve communication and engagement between its royal family members and make way for real-time digital solutions. Facebook at Work is a tool for co-workers to share and collaborate in a work environment to help make decisions and keep teams on the same page, seamlessly, wherever they are – in the office, at a working lunch or at a conference on the other side of the world.
- Fluid workings replace sticky structures
The millennial generation does not want to be confined to tradition; be it traditional gender roles, climbing the traditional corporate ladder or operating within traditional hierarchical structures and work scopes.
“We’re doing away with hierarchical job titles and responsibilities to empower our employees to self-manage – functioning independently and beyond the scope of work they would otherwise have operated,” says Boshoff. “Because we understand the value of living a challenged life to foster personal growth and function at their optimal potential, we create an environment to experience different levels, skills and responsibilities that wouldn’t have been possible within old-style structures.”
King Price is also the first of its kind to introduce unlimited leave for its general managers, giving them the opportunity to take complete ownership of their lives and their careers.
- Find a life, not a balance
Millennials are constantly looking for ways to live with purpose and feeling like they’re part of a community or something bigger than themselves, which is why brands with purpose attract the greatest talent.
“Millennials are not looking for a work-life balance, but are driven by the notion of living a fulfilled life,” says Boshoff. “Their work, friends, family, hobbies and interests are increasingly working in tandem to design a good life.”
To contribute to this holistic view, King Price’s Google-like working environment creates a home away from home, where employees can feel part a royal family. Employees are encouraged to explore entrepreneurship opportunities linked to their interests and passions, while never taking themselves too seriously but taking what they do very seriously – finding that illusive balance and comfort in an environment that’s designed to live life!
“To create a home away from home, we’ve crafted a work environment that translates seamlessly between work and play, complete with jukeboxes, arcade games, cash cube, table tennis, air hockey, dartboards and free popcorn and slush puppies or “Fun with a little madness” as we call it,” says Boshoff.
With over 76% of King Price Insurance’s royal family of 700+ staff and over 40% of its customers born after 1980, the short-term insurer has proven its proficiency as a digital native and an insurance brand that knows what it takes to capture millennial support.