Millennials — born between 1981 and 1996­ —have different priorities in the workplace than their predecessors.While money is desirable and a driving factor, having a lifeoutside of work, freedom to work flexible hours, and an environmentthat fosters teamwork is equally important.

Work/life balance, particularly working remote and with a flexible work week,rates high when choosing and staying with a career, as does theability to remain connected whether on-the-road, working from home,or in the office. And catering to these different demands will beparamount for companies who want to hire and retain millennialtalent, which will soon be the dominant generation in theworkforce.

According to Ernst & Young’s Global Generations Researchsurvey of nearly 10,000 full-time employees across generations ineight countries including the US, millennials are more likely totake a pay decrease, move, or pass on a promotion to managework/life demands better.

Millennials are also more likely to quit because of flexibilityissues. Sixty-nine percent of all full-time workers cite a “bosswho doesn’t allow [me] to work flexibly” as a leading reason forleaving a job and millennials rate workplace flexibility withhigher importance than every other generation.

A desire for flexible work schedules and spaces doesn’t meanmillennials don’t value collaboration. They do, more than any otherworkplace cohort. If you consider the ubiquitous use of socialmedia by this first generation of digital natives and theirengagement in larger global online communities over the course oftheir entire lives, this isn’t hard to understand.

Millennials are uniquely social. Sharing ideas, learning fromothers, and co-producing is a generational hallmark. They areaccustomed to and want to collaborate via technology.

Millennials are more productive and content when able tocollaborate easily with their team or clients from their personalwork space — whether in the office, on the road, or at home — andthey want to use the same technology platforms they use in theirpersonal lives: smartphones, tablets, and laptops.

Effective collaboration means providing tools that allow peopleto work together and complete projects as if they were together infront of a whiteboard or sitting at the huddle room table, even ifthey’re physically scattered across the globe. Millennials embraceusing collaboration technology and virtual workspaces, and are tenpercent more tech-oriented and collaborative than the norm, saysa workforce trends report from Dell and Intel.

Seventy-five percent of the workforce will be composed ofmillennials by 2025, and many of them are already our businessmanagers. Sixty-two percent of full-time millennials currentlymanage the work of others, according to EY. Given these statistics,it’s a mistake for a company to not pay attention to and invest inthe tools that will attract and retain millennial talent.

Millennial managers will continue to climb the corporate ladder,and they will have different views on the definition of managerialperks and benefits than the generations before them. Companies, andGen X and baby boomers, need to be ready and responsive.

Attitudes toward flexible work and the technology to support itneed to change

There is a distinct disconnect between the baby boomers and GenXers and millennials about remote and flexible work. Boomersparticularly tend to foster a traditional 8-to-5 workday inside anoffice. They also adopt less of the kind of new technology requiredfor successful virtual teamwork in a 24/7 workplace that extendsbeyond four walls.

Millennials sense the negativity or have experienced concreteblowback from their older management colleagues. The EY surveyshows 67 percent of millennials perceive a “flexibility stigma” andone in six millennials report having “suffered negativeconsequences as a result of a flexible work schedule.”

That blowback may partially stem from boomer fear that flexiblework will diminish productivity. Research shows this concern islargely unwarranted.

For example, Stanford Professor Nick Bloom and colleaguesfound allowing individuals to work from home results inincreased productivity … and increased employee personal happiness.Happy workers may also result in more productive workers.

In fact, economists at the University of Warwick foundthat happiness can be quantified in terms of productivity and thathappy workers are 12 percent more productive.

In addition to productivity fears, boomers may also bristle atthe perceived learning curve associated with the technology neededto meet the new way of work. The millennial generation is known forbeing early adopters of emerging technology, largely because it’s howthey’ve communicated their entire lives, using FaceTime, Skype,Snapchat, Periscope and myriad other apps.

For this reason, tools such as HD video conferencing as a partof any meeting is something they embrace as a powerful connectionand productivity tool. According to eMarketer.com, 54 percent of 18-to 34-year-olds visit YouTube at least once per day.

However, for generations who have not spent their entire liveson camera, working with collaborative technology tools likehigh-definition video conferencing can feel intimidating. Thehyper-real environment, perfect for creating theshoulder-to-shoulder feeling of actually being in the roomtogether, can be jarring at first. Getting over that initialintimidation and diving into these powerful tools, however, willprove a win-win for all generations.

According to Global Workforce Analytics, somewhere between80 to 90 percent of U.S. workers said in 2016 that they would liketo telework, at least part-time. Imagine if 80 to 90 percent of theworkforce was happier and 12 percent more productive?

Successful companies who find harmony with millennials and theirvast talent will embrace these workplace evolutions, while thosethat ignore this generation’s preferences and priorities do so attheir own peril, and perhaps the peril of company bottom lines.

Technology must meet the demands of emerging workpractices

The new reality of work is clearly moving toward the virtual.Brick-and-mortar offices may always exist for some, but theapplication of visual communications collaboration technologieswill continue to grow in support of ever larger numbers of peopleworking remotely.

Fifty-two percent of the global workforce spends at least someof its time working remote already, according to Dell andIntel.

Further, the traditional “cube farm” office environment ismorphing into open-space plans and huddle spaces, where the spaceis casual and the important collaboration work is done in huddlespaces and conference rooms, which are now equally likely to havevideo conferencing capabilities. The days of having a singletechnology-advanced conference room are on the wane because everymeeting, no matter how casual or formal, is improved when allteammates can be present, physically or virtually.

Once companies realize the necessity of offering flexible andremote work options, they’ll need to ensure their technology isrobust and collaborative enough to meet employee and companyrequirements. Skype, Facetime, and Google Hangouts are nice forfriends for one-to-one casual conversations, but businesses requirefar more stability and advanced features to create an atmosphere oftrue collaboration.

Collaboration means multiple people view something, understandit and interact with it, in real-time, at the same time. Far beyondthe technology used by teens to visually connect, HD collaborationtools allow every member of a business team to have the samemeeting experience, including seeing every meeting participant andtheir nonverbal cues and simultaneously viewing, manipulating,saving, and sharing data in real time, regardless of whether theyare physically in the room, at home, or on the road.

Understanding non-verbal cues is important; team members must beable to see and hear each other clearly and reliably to ascertainthe important non-verbal cues expressed through in-personinteraction. Compared to an audio-only conference call,videoconferencing offers participants an experience that rivalsthat of actual face-to-face interaction, with one of the mainadvantages being the ability to observe facial nuance, which can becritical in reading a colleague’s or customer’s (or adversary’s)true feelings.

While tone of voice and volume level can be used to understandsomeone’s unspoken thoughts, crucial nonverbal signals used incommunication would be completely lost in an audio-only exchangeand they take on almost cinematic inflections in highdefinition.

What we see on the screen, just as we observe in real life, maybe fleeting, but high definition, high frame rate videoconferencing provide users a substantial advantage over thoseworking on an audio-only conference call. Beyond that, the bestsystems allow users to save and print the work they createcollaboratively, and share it with others who were unable to attendthe session.

Technology solutions designed for collaboration, such as thosewith HD video-conferencing, digital whiteboards, projection, andinteractive touchscreens and touchpads make it easier than everbefore to offer millennials exactly what they want and businessesthe competitive advantage they need.

With a combination of video conferencing products andstate-of-the-art collaboration tools, the barriers to virtual teamcollaboration are eliminated. Just as important, the presumeddisconnect between flexible work and true collaborativeproductivity can be eliminated, removing obstacles to beingresponsive to millennial desires for more control over their workschedule and environment.

Millennials are the future of business, both as employees andconsumers. In many ways, they are already the current reality.Making sure that corporate attitudes and technologicalinfrastructure align with their operational preferences is the keyto a business’ success in recruiting the next-generation workforceand winning in an ever more competitive marketplace.