From your youngest employee to your most senior, each represents their own set of stories and life experiences. When the generations combine in your workplace, they form a web of disparate skills, attributes, and priorities that you can weave into a beautiful tapestry.
Fully appreciating this potential can revolutionize your workplace in several vital ways.
Include diverse perspectives
Age diversity brings about varying life experiences, values, and viewpoints that can promote creative problem-solving and a more effective response to challenges.
While there is a danger in over-generalizing, some facts are indisputable. For instance, people from Gen Z, those born between 1997 and 2012, are the first true “digital natives.” This cohort has never experienced life without computers and smartphones, and brings a drastically different perspective than that of a Boomer born before mobile technology existed.
By recognizing both what makes each generation unique and the commonalities that bind all workers, you can come up with new ways to overcome obstacles, solve problems, and spark innovations.
As a direct result, employee performance across the board can be enhanced when all feel supported, listened to, and recognized, and their generational gifts acknowledged.
Enhanced knowledge transfer
One of the most obvious benefits of hiring workers of varying ages is the opportunity for mentorship.
Seasoned, or older employees with years of experience, can share their gifts of industry knowledge, historical facts, and job specifics. This makes for an unbroken chain of information that leads to institutional stability, insights into the past, and the chance to use them to spark intelligence-based future growth.
The benefits that younger workers have to offer may seem less obvious at first glance, but are just as valuable. When older employees pay attention to their experience with newer technologies and emerging trends, all stand to become more digitally savvy and ready to take on the challenges that lie ahead.
Enhanced resilience
Each generation has learned to deal with adversity in its own unique way. Combine their experience for maximum benefit to your company.
When the next barrier bursts onto the scene, listening to the perspectives of all generations can expand your point of view. In the end, you might come up with ways to be agile in the face of change that a less expansive view would not have allowed.
Happier employees
Recognizing the input and strengths of workers of all ages helps to increase morale, boost engagement, and enhance retention.
When you make generational diversity a priority, your employees are some of the biggest winners. For your part, you genuinely listen to and often act upon each cohort’s unique perspectives. In return, they respond by being happier and more engaged.
As each member of your team interacts and collaborates with each other, all come to appreciate the complex gifts and limitations that combine to form the gestalt of the group as a whole.
As both morale and productivity improve, so does job retention. After all, who would want to leave such an inclusive workplace?
Better customer service
Inclusive employee management initiatives that embrace all generations also bring vicarious benefits to your client base. After all, the age and experiential disparities of your staff might well mirror similar ones in your clients.
As a result, collaboration among all team members can lead to a greater understanding of your full spectrum of buyers. With an optimized perception of communication styles, social media engagement, and other age-related factors, you can arrive at targeted marketing and product campaigns that can match each segment.
There are numerous factors that are beyond your control as a business owner. However, one of your most powerful potential assets lies in the rich set of qualities and gifts possessed by your employees of all generations.
Take the time to recognize them and to inspire dialogue and collaboration, and your workplace will be enriched.
North is a leading financial technology company that builds innovative, frictionless end-to-end payment solutions designed to simplify and grow businesses of all sizes. From the front door, to the back office, the developer world, and partnerships that expand the payments landscape, North offers proactive, comprehensive merchant services, in-house processing, and more.
