The infographic below, entitled “How Do We Spend Our Live Online,” was created with data from comScore, Pew Internet, The Digital Life and Nielsen.  Some interesting top line data points include:

We spend a typical hour in the following way:

• 22% on social networking sites
• 21% on searching for information
• 20% on reading content
• 19% on emails
• 13% on multi media sites
• 5% on online shopping

Social networking activities win a clear lion’s share of people’s attention, with this set of data suggesting that Facebook captures an average of more than 465 minutes of people’s time each month.

Highest growing trends of online usage:

• 27% Location based services
• 27% Time shift TV
• 19% Internet Banking

Least growing trends of online usage include:

• 12% User created videos
• 12% Live internet videos
• 12% Professionally created videos

So here are three of my surprises after viewing the Infographic:

• With growth of internal social networks in companies, more employees will be encouraged and see value in creating user-generated videos. Is this really on the downward shift?
• Forrester predicts the social enterprise software industry will become a $6.4 billion market by 2016. What happens to email? How long will it be taking up almost 20% of our typical hour during the day? Will this go down to 5% and how fast? If you listen to what companies like Jive, Moxie say, the death of email is right around the corner.
• The Global online population is exploding with 30% of world’s population. If Chinese users spend five hours a week shopping online, what does this mean for emerging markets in Africa, Vietnam and Indonesia, will they follow suit?

Here is the How We Spend Our Time Online Infographic.
Share your surprises with me here on the blog.

It’s a fact by the year 2020, there will be five generations working side by side with Millennials representing 50% of the workforce.

Working on a multi generational team is already commonplace among many organizations and an increasingly number of managers should prepare for this and yes embrace it.

Here are five suggestions to keep in mind when managing a multi-generation team:

1. Offer coaching and mentoring opportunities to GEN X: They are often referred to as the “lost generation,” as a result of being sandwiched between the Baby Boomers and the impatient motivations of Millennials. Gen X’ers want to be recognized for their expertise while at the same time worry they may suffer from Prince Charles Syndrome: Being passed over with promotions and recognition going to Millennials There are several ways to engage and retain Generation X: mentoring, customized career planning, flexible work arrangements and having succession planning conversations early and often.

2.    Anticipate That Millennials will ask about social media access during a job interview and have an answer for this or risk losing a prospective new hire. Millennials to ask about social media access, choice in technology usage at work and flexible work arrangements. According to the Cisco Connected Technology World Survey of 2,800 college graduates and young professionals, One third of respondents would accept a lower-paying job that had more flexibility with regard to device choice, social media access, and mobility than a higher-paying job with less flexibility, Two thirds of respondents will ask about a company’s social media policies during the job interview and 56% will not accept a job from a company that bans social media access from work or the will circumvent around this policy.

3.    Offer Boomers and Traditionalists the opportunity to share their expertise as coaches, mentors or faculty at corporate training programs. After all, Boomers are now referred to as Generation Ageless since Boomers are redefining what it means to age and grow old. In fact, The World Health Organization predicts that if a male is 60 years old and healthy he can continue to work in a full time job until the age of 74 and a female can continue until the age of 77 years old. As our older workers either want or need to stay in the workplace adopt a strategic view of how to use their skills and offer them continued training to keep their skills up to date as well as the opportunity to be faculty in a company’s corporate training programs.

4.    Consider customizing benefit packages for each generation. We live in a mass customized world of customized blue jeans, music and newspapers. Why not benefits? In their book, Workforce Of One, Susan Cantrell and David Smith argue that companies should adopt a “workforce of one” approach meaning applying customer segmentation practices to employees. Using this approach, can lead to a personalization of benefits. For example, rather than offer a standard package of health, wealth and paid time off for all employees, more companies should consider segmenting benefits by generation. So, a company might consider offering Millennials benefits in “life skills,” training in areas of financial literacy and learning a new language while benefits targeted to Boomers may focus on elder care or financial planning for retirement.

5.    Be proactive in creating a multi generational team. This means deliberately involve employees from a mix of generations, cultures, and gender on a project team. They will each approach the problem at hand with their unique mental map and this will make team projects that much richer. Consider this: By 2030 minorities will make up 42 percent of the U.S. population;

In the end, a multi-generational and multi-cultural team will help a company better prepare and understand the needs of a customer base, which increasingly will mirror your multi ethnic and multi generation employee population.

Share with us what your company is doing to manage a multi-generation workforce.