With a fifth generation now entering the American workforce, our offices are more diverse than ever. Everyone from Baby Boomers to Millennials are working in the same buildings and participating in the same meetings. Here are some great tips on how to bring harmony to the workplace and raise productivity by fostering and encouraging your multi-generational staff:
Promote Cross-Generational Training
Each generation has knowledge to offer. Older generations have years of experience, individualized expertise, and a wealth of knowledge cumulated over a lifetime. Younger generations are on the pulse of technology and trends and can provide unique insight into current affairs and markets. Merging these two generations can benefit both and create more harmony and teamwork within your staff.
A cross-generational mentorship program is a great way to promote unity in a way that benefits both members of the mentorship and forges stronger team bonds within your organization. Use career and personal goals to find employees who have matching expertise. Pairing different generational employees can boost the productivity and knowledge of all staff without expensive speakers or time-consuming meetings.
Analyze Career Goals
Part of being a great manager is understanding your employees. Regardless of their generation, all employees are not the same. Some dream of launching their own business, or becoming CEO, or simply staying in the position they are in until retirement. Understanding those goals and managing to meet them is essential for your employee's happiness and your business' productivity and success.
Spend time every year determining what is valued by each employee and what career path they want. Have candid conversations discussing their dreams and desires to get to the crux of what would make them happy. Team coworkers based on these goals. An engineer with 30 years in the field who wants to stay in a position to retirement can be a great mentor for a fresh-out-of-college 22-year-old looking for promotion to manager. Understanding your employee's goals can help engage employees and foster a harmonious workplace.
Learn to Communicate
Communication is often the biggest hurdle when managing multi-generational staff. Younger generations have been raised with social media and cell phones. Their communication style is more relaxed and informal, including abbreviations and emoticons. Older generations prefer face-to-face conversation and memos. Merging these two styles of communication can lead to missed meaning and hard feelings.
Foster an environment of open communication by conducting more open forum meetings that encourage dialog and discussion. Younger employees benefit from a distraction-free discussion that loosens the formality of non-verbal communications and older employees can avoid miscommunication by asking for clarification during discussions. Creating an environment for positive communication can go a long way in juggling the different styles of each generation.
Nix the Stereotypes
There are countless articles harping on the pros and cons of each generation currently in the workforce. This one is lazy and this one entitled. This one likes freedom while this one likes work. Just like other stereotypes, they don't represent your unique and individual employees. When managing a multi-generational staff, don't be sucked into the stereotypes. Treat each employee as an individual with their own goals and ideas. Speak to each employee to find their preferred style of communication, compensation, and career goals.
A multi-generational workforce has a wide array of benefits by combining experience with modern ideology. Helping those generational employees work together towards a common goal does require some finesse though. Using these tips can help accentuate the benefits of each generation and promote harmony within the ranks. These four tips provide fodder for managers hoping to bring their multi-generational employees together.
