We all know young workers spend a lot of time online. Even so, plenty of companies still struggle with the question: how do you stay genuinely in touch with your team?
Annika Krah looked into it and found that people aged 18 to 21 prefer WhatsApp by a wide margin. When they get a message from their employer about a shift or a schedule, 72.9 percent pick WhatsApp as their preferred channel. For comparison: only 22.6 percent prefer a staff app, and calling scores lower still.
That says a lot. Young people want fast, direct and personal contact, which is exactly what WhatsApp offers. They are used to short messages, quick replies and an informal tone. They do not expect an email with a salutation and a sign-off, but a message that feels like a conversation between equals.
It is the kind of contact a small business, a bar or restaurant say, can offer naturally. Contact where the personal feel of the workplace carries over into the conversation.
This is where it gets difficult for companies. Organisations are used to standardising communication, precisely to gain operational advantage: one scheduling tool, one message stream, one dashboard. That is logical. Uniformity means overview, data and efficiency.
There is a risk in it too. As soon as communication runs mostly through a closed app, an organisation loses personal contact with its workers. Young people do not see a scheduling app as somewhere they "talk to work", but as a system where they carry out tasks. And that feels different.
The difference looks small and its effect is large. Over WhatsApp a message feels like a conversation, through a scheduling app it feels like an instruction. The tone, speed and shape of communication decide how involved someone feels with an organisation. That involvement is exactly what many companies are trying to build with young workers.
A lot of companies now try to solve this by communicating over WhatsApp but then pointing workers to a scheduling app, often only when things get urgent. That does nothing for the personal tone. It produces standard messages and duplicate communication instead. Surely someone should be able to accept a shift over WhatsApp as well?
So the answer is not another app, but an environment that fits how young people already behave. Or, as the results show: if you want someone to respond, you have to step into their rhythm of communication rather than the other way round.
That asks for a different way of thinking. Not "how do we get everyone into one system?", but "how do we make our system feel like theirs?" The technology is already here. It comes down to tone, user experience and flexibility.
For staffing organisations that balance keeps getting more important.
A personal approach still matters, certainly in an industry where flexibility and enjoying the work rank high. Young people are happy to work, and they also want the contact to stay human. That usually starts with a simple message.
Maybe that is the lesson: if you really want to reach your workers, you do not need to invent a new app. Mostly you need to keep talking.