Managing A Multigenerational Workforce
by Miki SaxonGreat post by Steve Roesler over at All Things Workplace on How Age Impacts Your View of Life. It focuses on satisfaction and expectations at various stages of life. Click over, it’s well worth reading.
But what I wanted to discuss here today appeared near the end of the post.
Steve said, “During the past few years we’ve seen the headlines for Talent Wars, Saving Institutional Knowledge and Learning, and Diversity. My experience so far with recent layoffs has been that workers nearing retirement are being offered packages to accelerate their decisions…I wonder if the decision-making maturity and collective knowledge of these newly “retired” workers will be irreplaceable and actually prompt a lengthening of the recovery process.”
Steve’s got a point about the recovery, but what if this mess hadn’t happened?
What if a normal down cycle had occurred? One that didn’t go global with the same vengeance; one that required only spotty realignment as opposed to wholesale layoffs.
Worker demographics have been a global concern for over a decade, but the MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) and the corresponding skills needed to manage a multigenerational workforce haven’t improved nearly as much as was hoped.
Why? Is there a root to the problem (challenge, if you prefer) that should be addressed, but isn’t?
I have an idea about the root, tell me what you think.
I believe that one large piece of this problem stems from the relationship of parents and children and the difficulty of letting go and changing the paradigms.
Notice that ‘paradigm’ is plural, since there are several going on simultaneously; the major ones are
- older (parent), younger (child);
- peer (siblings/relatives) to peer;
- older (sibling/relative), younger (sibling/relative) and vice versa,
but there are multiple other minor configurations.
What I’ve found is that although there is no family involved, for many people the interaction styles are habitual, unconscious and happen across all ages with no discernable pattern.
If, in fact, this is a root problem how do we fix it? Other than a one-at-a-time approach I have no idea.
What are your thoughts regarding the validity of my hypothesis? What ideas do you have to address it?
Image credit: flickr
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