Talent Development and Age Diversity in the Workplace
Leadersin talent development have begun focusing on Age Diversity in the Workplace. First of six articles on the four generations in the workplace.
4th out of 6 series on age diversity in the workplace. Includes link to whitepapers on the four generations in the workplace.
Never in history have there been four distinct demographic group in the workplace. These groups are different in their experiences, values and beliefs. Today’s managers are challenged to help each group get what they need from their jobs and their workplace relationships. The age diversity in the workplace results in complexity when trainers are forced to deal with different communication and learning styles of these groups.
We believe that Age Diversity is going to be one of the “hot” areas for Human Resources professionals in this century. This is the fourth of six blogs on this topic. You can subscribe (look to the column on the right) to get future updates. The four generations, of course, are Baby Boomers, Millennials(GenY), the Traditionalists(sometimes called The Silent Generation) and GenerationX. Each of these demographic groups has different touch points and is at different stages of their work and life cycle. For a clear definition of each group, and the major life experiences of its members, scroll down to the prior blog or check out our whitepaper, Four Generations in the Workplace.
But the generational differences are perhaps most pronounced in the preferred way to receive and share information. Keep in mind as we blog about age diversity in the workplace, the following are generalities and your co-workers and colleagues are individuals who may or may not fit the generalizations.
These trends show up in interesting ways. The chart on the left is based on the study, “The Future @ Work” by Jeanne C. Meister and Karie Willyerd.
On-line contributions
We have broken out each generation, by willingness to contribute to a wiki, a bulletin board or other corporate knowledge management system. The blue bars show the percentage of employees willing to start new topics, ask questions or initiate discussion on bulletin boards. Notice that Millennials and Gen X-ers are strongest at initiating new topics, with over 45% of Millennials starting new discussions.
Here is an upside to age diversity, notice the brown bars: employees over 65 are the most likely to contribute additional content once a topic has been initiated. This confirms that Traditionalistsand Baby Boomers in the workplace exhibit what sociologist call generativity, a desire to share what they have learned and their life experience. 51% of employees in both groups contribute content to intranet, knowledge sharing systems.
The green bars represent the percentage of each demographic group willing to look for information on-line, even if they are unwilling to contribute new information.
To summarize, 64% of Traditionalists are willing to use on-line information sharing tools, as are 67% of Baby Boomers.
The younger generations are more comfortable with technology, resulting in usage of on-line tools. Gen X-ers trail Millennials slightly, with 85% of Gen X-ers and 90% of Millennials using corporate wikis, bulletin boards or other corporate knowledge management tools.
For organizations, the black bars imply a serious challenge: One third of all older workers, aged 50+) will not use an on-line tool to seek information.
Later this week we will blog about the implications for mentoring created by these differences – and solutions to the challenges created by these communication and learning preferences. Again, we have consolidated all of these blogs in a single whitepaper.
We appreciate your reading this blog. Please consider signing up for future updates, via email or RSS, and follow us on Twitter @MentrResources.
Leadersin talent development have begun focusing on Age Diversity in the Workplace. First of six articles on the four generations in the workplace.
Generational Diversity in the workforce and mentoring. Tools for managing 4 different demographic groups in the workplace. White paper available.
Part of a series of blogs on Age Diversity or Generational diversity in the workplace. White papers from several sources are available on the topic.
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