There are four generations in modern workplaces: Baby Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y, and Gen Z. Each of the generations has some unique characteristics and skills to create an overall, collective impact. Generational diversity in the workplace refers to these employees of different age-groups working for common organizational goals.
It brings different opinions, skills, attitudes, and beliefs of each generation to the forth. To drive your organization forward, you need to change your hiring practices and employ a dynamic workforce that spans multiple age-groups. This is just one of the steps you can take to embrace generational diversity in your workplace.
Remember, each generation of employees can bring something distinctive to your organization. This will help you attract the right talent, capitalize on the strengths of each generation, and compete in the market.
With this strategy, you can tap into the wisdom and experience of the different generations. The different perspectives and opinions will help your organization develop new ideas and innovative ways of working.
But, you need to ensure a seamless flow of generational diversity in the workplace to reap its numerous benefits. Some of the most irresistible advantages of this strategy are:
- Drives Innovation
The generational diversity in your workplace brings in a diverse set of experiences and perspectives. The different perspectives of different age groups, in turn, will lead to the development of new ideas.
These four generations can share their unique ideas producing innovation and spontaneous breakthroughs contributing more to the company. This is one of the benefits of bringing together tech-savvy people, people with experience, and those who are somewhere in between.
- A Diverse Set of Skills
A generational diversity consists of different generations, each of them having their skill sets. The older generation offers great time management skills and loyalty to their organization. The younger generation has a broad mindset, is adaptive to new learning, including technology, and has more entrepreneurial skills. All of these critical skills ultimately benefit the organization.
- Learning Opportunities
Each generation has a specific set of skills and knowledge to contribute to the workplace. Younger generations bring in digital knowledge while the older generation has more expertise and experience in their work.
Employees can teach each other their skills irrespective of age, which will help increase the organization’s efficiency. This way, employees can gain new skills and also improve how they work together.
- More Approaches to Problem-Solving
There are many different ways of solving a problem. And only a multi-generational workplace can take advantage of new solutions. As each generation has a different approach to solving problems at work, organizations can benefit from this resulting in a better thought solution. Older generations use their experience to explain or solve any issue, while newer generations will have new ideas to address the problems.
- Succession Planning
Organizations can benefit from generational diversity in the workplace by creating a succession plan. By utilizing each generation’s unique strengths, knowledge and recognizing their contributions, they will be able to motivate and develop future leaders. This will also help reduce the hiring costs for your organization in the future, as you will already have new leaders ready to take on the organization.
- Customer Understanding
A workforce that can relate to customer’s needs can provide organizations with a significant advantage. An age-diverse workforce will help bring perspectives of different generations, which will help understand the different target audiences you are trying to reach. This will also give you a competitive advantage making you stand out in the market.
- Training and Mentorship
A generationally diverse workforce will have mature talents with knowledge, skills, and experience to act as mentors and train the younger talents. Likewise, reverse mentoring can also be done, which means younger talents can teach their mentors how to keep up with the advancing technology and, in turn, refine their training and mentoring skills. This way, organizations can significantly reduce their training expenditure while enhancing communication between generations.
- Enhance Workplace Productivity
A mix of generations in the workplace can enhance workplace productivity. For example, older people like to work in an office environment in a 9 to 5 shift while younger people are open to working remotely and during evenings and weekends. It will allow organizational work to be ongoing, enhancing the productivity of your workplace.
Combining different talents, skills, approaches, and perspectives is imperative for the success of any organization. Management can only take appropriate steps to build a multiple-generation workforce. Ultimately, it is the responsibility of everyone in the workplace, including employers and employees, to develop an atmosphere of diversity.
