Young, Old Find Workplace Balance
More than 60 percent of employers report tension between employees of different generations – from clashes over flip-flops to flextime according to a recently published survey.
Does this surprise you?
It shouldn’t, experts say.
A mix of multiple generations, along with their clashes, has coexisted in the workplace for years.
What’s different today is the organizational structure within which those workers interact. It’s flatter, leaner and more flexible than the traditionally tall, hierarchical bureaucracy. Instead of older workers holing up in their windowed offices and younger workers toiling away on the factory floor, they are working side-by-side, cubicle-by-cubicle. In some cases, the younger ones are managing their more senior colleagues.
The trend is worth noting, according to additional findings published in a survey conducted by Lee Hecht Harrison, a New Jersey-based career consulting firm.
Seventy percent of older employees are more dismissive of younger workers’ abilities, while nearly 50 percent of employers say that younger employees are dismissive of the abilities of their older co-workers.
No longer segregated by the stratified hierarchy and instructed by formalities and protocols on how to interact, these multigenerational teams are left to their own devices for working together. How should managers, young and old, react?
An important first step is to “stop labeling generations with negatives,” says Prof. Lisbeth Claus, a human resources expert and professor in Willamette University’s MBA program. “Age is just one element of the diversity.”
She recommends that managers avoid judging members by their groups, treat people how “they” would like to be treated, and obtain a better understanding of where colleagues are in the many stages of life.
Remember that the meaning of work varies with each individual, she added. Both young and old generations have equally strong things to add to a company.
The “voices of youth” program at Infosys Technologies Ltd. in Bangalore is a key part of the company’s innovation process. Each year the company selects nine top-performing young workers to participate in its eight yearly senior management council meetings, presenting and discussing their ideas with the top leadership team.
The company’s CEO says: "If an organization becomes too hierarchical, ideas that bubble up from younger people [aren't going to be heard]."
Older employees bring their skills, too. And it’s important to dispel the myths that they are not tech-savvy or as productive as their younger counterparts.
According to the National Older Workers Career Center:
- 57% of Americans age 65-69 are online
- 51% of workers age 50-59 use a computer at work
- The percent of seniors who go online increased by 47% between 2000 and 2004
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Administration on Aging issued a paper that seeks to dispel the following myths:
Myth: Productivity declines with age.
Reality: Studies show perceptions that older workers can be hard to motivate and inflexible are more related to the manager's opinion of older workers.
Myth: Older employees have more problematic interpersonal relations with coworkers.
Reality: Older workers rank as high as or higher than younger workers in terms of positive interpersonal skills.
Myth: Older employees may be coasting until retirement.
Reality: In a survey by Yankelovich of 400 human resource decision-makers, 87% rated older workers as having solid performance records. As for absenteeism, older employees come to work as often as, or more frequently than, other workers. According to the BLS, the number of people age 55 and over in the labor force rose nearly 40 percent in the last decade, while the total labor force grew by 20 percent.
What, then, are the implications for managers and the older employees? Follow these six guidelines to promote ethical practices involving the older worker:
- Focus on performance factors, not age. Don't attribute declining performance to age; make decisions based on facts.
- Explore the organization's philosophy regarding reinvesting in older workers. Can education and training benefit an employee?
- Assess workforce reduction in protected groups, including those employees over 40, before any planned layoff or position elimination. Identify any disproportionate impact on older workers.
- Acknowledge the benefits of age, such as experience, employee loyalty, mature decision making and problem solving, and accumulated knowledge and dependability.
- Identify role models who reflect the organization's values.
- Learn to recognize stress in older employees and help alleviate some of the sources.