Symantec, the IT security company, recently released a study of IT risks posed by the social computing workstyle of Millennials in the workforce. Obviously Symantec is not a disinterested party, but their findings are very interesting and validate many of the observations made in Generation Blend. Among the highlights of the study:

• 66 percent of Millennials regularly access social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace at work, vs.13 percent of other workers.
• 75 percent of Millennials access Webmail at work vs. 54 percent of others.
• 46 percent of millennials use IM at work vs. 22 percent of others.
• Less than half (45 percent) of Millennials stick to company-issued devices or software as opposed to nearly 70 percent of other workers. And 69 percent of Millennials will use whatever application/device/technology they want regardless of source or corporate IT policies (only 31 percent of others).
• Three times as many millennials have downloaded software at work for personal use (75 percent vs. 25 percent).
• Millennials regularly store corporate data on personal devices - far more than others. Common channels are personal PCs (39 percent vs. 24 percent), USB drives (38 vs. 14), personal hard drives (20 vs. 13), and smart phones (13 vs. 6).

Findings of this nature highlight the imperative that organizations face in harmonizing the workstyles of their younger workers with the legitimate security, governance and compliance issues raised by the use of consumer-grade technologies in the enterprise.

This need not - and, I would argue, should not - be simply a matter of enacting and enforcing stricter IT regulations. When organizations are competing for talent, IT policies are HR policies. They send a message about the overall level of trust and transparency in the workplace, and the quality of the work experience, which is a primary factor in the job choices of many talented Millennials.

In Generation Blend, I offer some guidance for organizations about how to have productive conversations around IT policies with Millennials, in ways that include and respect their perspective rather than simply issuing command-and-comply edicts from above. As we get more data such as the Symantec study, the ability to have those conversations will increasingly be a competitive asset for organizations scrambling to employ the talents of Net Generation workers.