The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 has hastened the progress of the so- called Fourth Industrial Revolution1, accelerating digital adoption across nearly all organisational units. Necessitated by concerns about public health, this has accelerated the process of digital transformation that was already underway... Reckoning with this is essential to ensuring any organisation's long-term competitive advantage, particularly when it comes to attracting human resources. Technological disruption continues its forward march unabated, and everybody had better get on board.

For so-called digital natives - comprising Millennials and Gen Z-ers - it is about time. This is the New Collar Workforce. Technology has touched all aspects of their lives, all of their lives, and for many their employers (and their parents!) catching up is a welcome development. Alongside an affinity for and with technology, this demographic has fundamentally different hopes, dreams, fears, and priorities to the generations that came before them. Their values are pervasive and impact all elements of their behaviour - what they eat, where they shop, how they travel, who they vote for, when they get married, how they consume information and, importantly for any organisation, how they think about employment, what they value in a workplace and a team, and ultimately where they want to work.

Understanding them and communicating with them effectively is essential to the long-term success of all organisations. As customers, for one, but also as employees or potential employees. When shifting the paradigm and considering job seekers as the consumers of workplaces, this distinction becomes irrelevant. Nevertheless, the New Collar workforce remains poorly understood and poorly engaged, particularly when it comes to recruitment marketing. Why? In addition to the new ways in which they access and consume information, they do not fit neatly into the labour models or classifications of the past: they are following diverse career paths through a volatile economy, working a portfolio of jobs that cut across historically rigid blue collar/white collar lines - these people are better educated than prior generations, yet face higher levels of unemployment than older cohorts.

This is the New Collar worker. They are tech savvy, mission-driven, and mobile. They are well educated but prepared to learn new skills for a new assignment or new career direction. They care about who they work with and what type of place they're working in more than any generation before them. Communicating with them effectively calls for a new approach: new technologies, new messaging, and new organisational behaviours.

Fundamentally, all of this can be reduced to two (golden) threads that companies need to address: the message and the medium. The two are inextricably linked, and those that understand this and act upon it will be best placed to succeed. In this research paper we explore the foundations of these two ideas and consider how important they are to the future of recruitment marketing and talent acquisition specifically.

Creating an environment in which people will want to work is up to you. But once you have, inploi is here to help you to tell that story to the New Collar workforce, developing a community around your brand and connecting you efficiently with the people you need to reach. The future of your organisation depends upon it.

This is just part one in a series on the New Collar Workforce, which will be posted weekly. To read the whole research piece click here.