Building a multi-generational workforce can be a great advantage for companies across the globe. But with different goals, motivations, and expectations attracting and retaining the workforce can be challenging at times. Age diversity at the workplace can significantly improve the productivity of your business. The multigeneration workforce is defined as:
- Baby Boomers – born 1946-1964
- Generation X – born 1965-1980
- Generation Y (Millennials) – born 1981-1996
- Generation Z – born 1997-2012
How to Attract and Retain Multigeneration Workforce
Flexible Workplace
73% of employees want flexible work options to remain after Covid. A flexible workplace can include flexible work shifts, remote working options
Understand your employees
Engage workers of all ages, understand what they need from their career and from your workplace. Different age groups emphasize different factors like salary incentives, company culture, space to grow, learning new skills. Try to schedule one-to-one meetings with your employees to understand their needs and you can facilitate this in your workplace.
Learning and Development
As career progression is extremely necessary in today’s world, you need to ensure you provide lots of opportunities to all the age groups in your workplace to learn new skills and progress to the next level in their career. Upskilling doesn’t involve formal training alone but can happen also through knowledge-sharing sessions among generations to groom a budding team.
BENEFITS OF AGE DIVERSITY IN THE WORKPLACE
- Creates a dynamic workplace: Age-diverse workplaces create a balance between traditional and contemporary practices. Accepting and embracing people of different ages brings different perspectives to a problem and provides a solution with experience and innovation.
- Diverse set of skills: Age-diverse workplaces can bring more diverse skills to the table. Combining diverse skills and multiple perspectives across teams brings a wide range of new opportunities to grow.
- Mentorship: Another benefit of age-diverse teams is the fact that the older employees are often considered as mentors who can share knowledge with the new generation. Their overall experience and decision-making skills help the younger generation and result in high productivity and improve the individual’s performance.
- Innovation: All the factors like workplace productivity, experience, knowledge sharing contributes to the company’s innovation. Innovation not only in the product/services but also to improve the efficiency of internal processes.
- Empathy: Empathy is one of the essential factors in the workplace. A diverse age group in the workplace promotes communication and understanding among the employees.
Conclusion
By understanding and acknowledging everyone’s strengths, weaknesses, and skills you can reap the benefits of a multi-generational workforce and build a powerful foundation for long-term success.
