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Millennials bring different expectations to workplace By Dave Gardner
Technology and healthcare has entered a new era with exciting new ways to fight and prevent disease. An effort, using an understanding of DNA and how diseases arise at the cellular level are being studied in the lab and with volunteer participants. On the cancer front, a diagnosis that was once a death sentence is giving way to a variety of high tech treatments that are aimed at the root of disease itself. Read all about these achievements and their application in NEPA.
A supplement of the Northeast Pennsylvania Business Journal
A Geisinger Health System employee handles DNA samples in the lab.
Healthcare Update
A new era: Understanding DNA and how diseases arise.
PAgES 19-30
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Made in NEPA indicates that millennials are replacing the nation’s baby boomers as the largest demographic group. Abhijit Roy, D.B.A, professor of management, marketing and entrepreneurship at the University of Scranton sees millennials as the product of global times, with superb technological proficiency and short interest spans. “The millennials are not that concerned with privacy and expect a lot of their personal information to be out there for all to see,” Roy said. “This is so widespread that many employers no longer contact a job applicant’s references. Instead, they look at social media for information because it’s more truthful.” He said millennials are also effective multi-taskers and they’re comfortable in urban environments
without the safety concerns of their generational predecessors. In addition, they are observational in decision-making processes, with their short interest spans playing a role in decisions. “The modern marketplace has many tools to reach this diversified group with purchases and nimble and fast makes the sale,” Roy said. “Celebrity endorsements also mean little to the millennials.” Demand for immediacy Vendors seeking to capture business from the millennials must understand that, as a group, these youthful buyers want immediate answers, according to Jeff Kimmel, vice president of customer service at Web.com. Kimmel’s company helps businesses achieve a web presence and of his 350 employees within NEPA, 50 percent are millennials with a broad mix of educational achievements. Kimmel described how call centers such as used by Web.com have traditionally used a sequential process where customers weed through Please see COVER STORY, Page 31
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HEALTHCARE UPDATE
APRIL 2017 VOL. 32 NO. 4
The change agents
Companies who employ the “digital” generation, known as the millennials, had best be prepared to evolve or risk being left behind. Millennials are the members of society who reached adulthood at the beginning of the 21st century. They live within an electronics-filled, socially-networked, online world where their combined consciousness creates a form of collective intelligence that is new to the world. They may be computer wizards and able to learn quickly, but within some circles, millennials have been described as entitled and reticent, attributable, some say, to doting parents and insecurity about their skills and little employer feedback. According to the Pew Research Center, 76 million millennials now inhabit the United States, and 50 percent of these youth consider themselves politically unaffiliated. They send an average of 50 text messages every day and 20 percent have at least one immigrant parent. The Institute for Public Policy and Economic Development has cited data from 2014 that indicates Lackawanna County, with a total population exceeding 212,000, includes 6.6 percent of its residents to be within the ages of 15 to 19, 6.6 percent between 20 to 24 and 12 percent between ages 24 to 34. Luzerne County, with a much larger population exceeding 318,000, tallied population percentages numbers comparable to Lackawanna. Both counties have millennials very close to averages throughout the state. A big picture look at the millennial generation
SPRiNG 2017
15:09 | FANNINGCHR
Family-operated machining company celebrates 40 years. PAgE 36
The Sporting Life in NEPA
Stock Car Racing Experience at Pocono Raceway, Blakeslee.
PAgE 35
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