What Can You Do to Promote Intergenerational Working at Work?

Do you find it difficult to find common ground with your younger colleagues? Here are ways you can promote intergenerational working at your workplace.

Do you find it difficult to find common ground with your younger colleagues or even to communicate at all in a world of emojis and social media? You’re not alone. According to LinkedIn, half of over 55-year-olds avoid conversations with their youngest colleagues and four out of five under 27-year-olds haven’t spoken to an over-50s work colleague in the last year.

That Us vs Them dynamic is not the best way to get the most out of your team, particularly when, as Western societies age and people want - or need - to work longer, it is becoming increasingly common to find four or five generations working in the same organisation.

Having all these different generations under one roof presents challenges, but also opportunities, both for employers - and employees - to reap the benefits of the different ideas, experiences, perspectives and skills that people of different ages offer. Research shows intergenerational workforces - where a conscious effort is made to integrate the different generations - are more productive and happier

55/Redefined, who publish Life/Redefined helps employers understand how they can promote age inclusion, but what can we as individuals do?

How to Create an Environment that Encourages Communication

It all starts with being aware of team dynamics and the benefits of age inclusion. Maybe you could offer to mentor a younger colleague and pass on your experience? Or perhaps your employer might operate a reverse mentoring scheme whereby younger workers learn from their older colleagues while also educating the older employees about what motivates them - offering new perspectives, ideas and ways of communicating.

A culture that draws on the experiences and skills of different generations can be an excellent way to uncover innovative solutions to your company’s challenges.

It’s also a good idea to seek out opportunities to learn alongside people of different generations. 55/Redefined has been working with global advertising company, Dentsu on their digital marketing apprenticeship programme. The programme is open to people of all ages including those over-50, offering them the opportunity to upskill or reskill, return after a break, unretire, or make a 'squiggly career' move.

Finding Ways to Come Together

Another way that employees can contribute to a strong intergenerational culture is through setting up an employee resource group on age. This can include people of all ages in the organisation and can be used to:

consciously bring people together
encourage intergenerational conversations
contribute to company policy - for instance, testing and improving recruitment and retention policies
enhancing the overall culture through intergenerational events

A growing number of employers are already alert to the need to improve their recruitment processes. For example they may be considering the wording of job adverts, ensuring diverse age representation on interview panels and introducing an inclusive approach to the images used on their careers site.

55/Redefined has, for instance, worked with leading insurance company Hastings Direct to hire an age-diverse workforce which better reflected their customer base. Read their success story.

55/Redefined is also working with Amazon UK whose HR director UK Catherine Hearn is on the record as saying: “Age inclusion is now our number one challenge. The business case has become so obvious for us that it’s now a business imperative."

How Unconscious Age Stereotypes Can be Overcome

Each generation has been formed by the different experiences it has faced and the ideas it has grown up with. Different skills and modes of working may have been acquired along the way.

However, it’s important not to allow generalisations to become stereotypes; for example, “older workers don’t understand technology”. Not only is this untrue, but perpetuating such myths can damage an employee’s effectiveness. A 2017 US study found that employees facing age-based stereotypes are "less able to commit to their current job" and "less focussed on long-term professional goals".

Shared events and opportunities to talk to people from different generations help people to understand each other better and challenge unhelpful stereotypes. 55/Redefined recommends other measures such as ensuring company imagery is age inclusive and celebrating the success of older employees in activities outside work within company newsletters, so this is something you could suggest to your employer. 55/Redefined also offer a range of learning and engagement solutions around age-conscious inclusion and leading multigenerational teams.

Digital Fluency + Knowledge Base = Better Business Decisions

Diverse teams make "better business decisions 87% of the time" and team results improve by 60%, according to research. Diversity takes in sex, race, religion, disability and sexuality, of course, but it also includes age. So, while younger employees may be more digitally fluent, older workers probably have more years of industry knowledge. An age-diverse workforce allows companies to pool employees’ skills and knowledge, increasing productivity and efficiency.

Employees of different generations can learn new skills from each other, widening the skill set available within the company. With four or five generations’ worth of different life experiences, companies can both draw on wisdom gained through decades of experience while, at the same time, encourage insights that challenge conventional thinking.

Intergenerational Working Makes for a Resilient, Flexible and Productive Team

A workforce with intergenerational cooperation is inherently flexible. For example, older workers may not need to take holidays when schools break up, in the way that parents with school-age children do. The over-50s may also be willing to work shift patterns that younger workers find unattractive, such as early Sunday mornings. In a survey of over-40s workers, 42% said the most important consideration of a new job is flexible working patterns.

A multigenerational company can also be more resilient and adaptable – older workers have lived through previous downturns, recessions and challenging periods, and have insight in how to cope in the face of change.

So, remember, employees of all ages have a lot to offer and there are lots of things you as an individual can do to ensure multigenerational teams are truly intergenerational, making the most of everyone’s knowledge, experience and potential.