An HR Department has a 40 year old Director, a 63 year-old clerk, and two Senior Clerks – one is 19 and the other is 46. Do you see a problem?
This distribution of workers by age is typical of the modern corporation. In the past, the distribution would have shown the age-senior people directing the younger. The new distribution is the future; do not underestimate the challenges to HR.
Drop the labels.
Stop thinking of employees as “generational;” if that means meaningless labels, such as “Generation X” or “Millennial.” But, recognize there are behaviors manifest within age groups.
- Workers over 40 will stay on well into their 60s for financial and social reasons.
- Those who came of age at the end of the 20th-century are well into their 30s.
- And, those born in the 1990s are new to the working environment.
Behaviors do define their origins.
- Those born in the years following WWII find themselves working much longer than they had planned. They bring loyalty, self-interest, and experience to the table. Traditionalist in style, they respect order and authority.
- Those born after the Viet Nam era are the bulk of the current workforce in their 40s to 50s. As the current management team, they have determined the state and direction of the business economy. They have been prized for thinking outside of the traditionalist box and accelerating technology and innovation. Their leadership both caused and rescued the economy through the 2008 crash.
- Those born since Miami Vice went off the air are the producers and makers. The central event of their lives has been 9/11, and the American Dream has eluded them in many ways. Their value is often clouded by their needs to be nurtured.
- And, those born since the introduction of the personal computer and the world-wide web are well educated minimalists, only as loyal as their backpack and latest smart phone permit.
The HR responsibility is to play to these value systems, resolve conflicts based on the differences, and find ways to utilize and integrate the strengths of each. It also has to draw a picture of where these strengths are taking production and personnel needs.
Play to the strengths.
- There is value and strength in this diversity. This is the new model, and this is the way it should be – because this is the way it is going to stay.
- Get excited about it. Share the diversity with the staff, discuss its value, have fun with it, and put it to work. Simply put, effectiveness depends on your ability to manage a team.
- Demonstrate how HR Department effectiveness directly integrates the different skills you find at the table. You can address and utilize strengths independent of their job titles. Put employees into buddy mode and cross-training.
- Assign duties, such as innovation, futures thinking, social media communications, and HR software applications, in addition to their traditional duties in filing, records, payroll, and benefits processing.
- Model the successful team for other departments.
Do not mistake any difference for a major difference. For example, craftspeople on a manufacturing floor are reluctant to share their experience. A heads-up manager can run interference on any conflict by coaching the crafts-person to model his/her traditions. For example, make him/her the department historian who brings the youth into the culture. Make the youth appreciate what the tradition offers and show him/her how to bring new ideas and technologies forward as solutions instead of problems.
Use your HR software to profile the corporate age distribution. Adjust all communications to serve the distribution in terms of needs, language, and models. Use HR software to profile individual departments, monitor the cross-training, and analyze performance. Make age a means – not a barrier.
