01
Appreciate generational values and life stages but avoid stereotyping. Rather than putting people in boxes and making judgements, use the diversity to open dialogue. This leads to greater understanding of each group or team member. Don’t assume older employees have more knowledge, or younger employees are disloyal. A long serving member of staff might be as motivated to grow and develop as a new member.
What can you do to avoid stereotyping in the workplace?
- Be aware of your own bias and stereotyping
- Invest in training on bias.
- Recognise similarities but believe that everyone is an individual.
02
Beware of ageism
- Not giving challenging or high responsibility work to certain ages, because of your views on ability to complete or motivation to take on work.
- Designing non inclusive activities or social events.
- Expecting only certain groups to have family responsibilities or commitments.
- Passing people over for promotion based on their age (too old or too young) rather than their ability to perform.
- Notice the language used in job descriptions that may alienate certain groups or generations.
03
Redesign your employee benefits and perks.
Again, we are all individuals, but there are generational differences when we consider life aspirations, different needs and wants, and even different values.
While 56% of your workforce will be under 40 by 2025, and the largest group being millennials, don’t tailor your benefits with only them in mind. Don’t assume everyone wants to work from home, wants to play table tennis at lunch or have Friday socials with a beer.
Create flexible work places and flexible benefits. When considering health and wellbeing, don’t just focus on gym membership, offer health plan, counselling services, coaching and mentoring.
The long service awards and associated perks might need to go and be replaced by shorter periods of service. Again, the key is to empower individuals and not design workplaces suiting just one part of the population.
04
Become a learning and collaboration organisation.
This is one of the best ways to not only attract and retain talent, but it ensures your legacy. Multigenerational and diverse workforces have a breadth of knowledge and experience.
Create a culture where continual learning and development is just how you do things. Create curiosity and growth mindsets and encourage questions and knowledge sharing. Create opportunities for different generations and functions to learn and collaborate.
Organise lunch and learn sessions, webinars, training sessions where diverse groups come together. Create diverse project teams and assign new members of staff with either older or younger employees. Everyone can teach everyone else a thing or two.
05
Collect data on employee engagement and employee experience.
Keeping on top of employee engagement, employee experience and satisfaction is critical. There has long been a movement to assess a countries success by more than GDP. Happiness, health and wellbeing are critical success factors. As you lead, your employee engagement should be a critical measure on your balanced scorecard. Especially as many people now work remotely, checking their motivation and satisfaction levels is essential. But above all, talk to and with your people.
Be the bridge between generations and create an organisation that you are proud of.
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