Imagine managing a stable of workers who knowingly disregard IT policies, who think your company’s social media and mobile device usage polices are stale, and who believe they are not responsible for protecting company information and devices.

It sounds like a network TV sitcom plot, but it’s not. It’s Gen Y, and, according to a recent Cisco survey, it’s a reality.

The future of work, according to Cisco.

For its annual Connected World Technology Report, Cisco surveyed 1,441 college students aged 18-24, and 1,412 employees aged 21-29 in 14 countries. The purpose of the study was to gain insight into the behavior and expectations of the next generation of workers, and how their demands for information access are changing the future of work. The study was conducted between May and June 2011.

Among the more notable findings:

• Internet as Basic Human Necessity: One of every three college students and employees surveyed globally (33%) believes the Internet is a fundamental resource for the human race – as important as air, water, food and shelter. About half (49% of college students and 47% of employees) believe it is “pretty close” to that level of importance. Combined, four of every five college students and young employees believe Read more…

Jenny Sweeney Consumerization of IT Cisco, FACEBOOK, Generation Y, InformationWeek, millennials, mobility, Twitter

If you are still blocking your employees from using social media because you fear it will halt productivity, you’ve been reading the wrong research.

In an article published Nov. 11 in the Harvard Business Review, writers Jeanne C. Meister and Karie Willyerd make the case for the “uber-connected” organization of 2010. First, they assert, access to social media improves productivity. They point to the results of a study conducted by the University of Melbourne in Australia, which found that those who browse the internet for non-work-related purposes — within reason of course — are 9 percent more productive than their counterparts who don’t. (We wrote about this study when it was published in April. Read it here.)

Meister and Willyerd point to two other reasons companies should champion the use of social media: they maintain that the new workforce will seek out jobs that encourage the use of it, and add that companies that provide access to IM, Facebook, wikis, Twitter, etc. have more engaged workers.

If anything, keep this in mind: Those millennials… they “are prepared to bypass corporate IT departments if these tools are blocked.”

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Jenny Sweeney Social Media, This Week in Tech News, Worker Productivity Australia, Harvard, millennials