These guidelines give managers and staff alike a starting point for creating a generation friendly workplace.
If you want to become an employer of choice for the best candidates, you need to become more "generation friendly". You need to appeal to younger and older workers alike.
The workplace is now inhabited by up to 4 different generations, each with their own ideas on how work should work. Smart organisations know that the secret to attracting and retaining the best people is to select from the largest possible talent pool - and this means considering people from all generations.
So, how do you determine how "generation friendly" your organisation is? Well, you need to look at the formal policies and procedures you have in place to determine whether they have been designed with people of all ages in mind.
All effective managers, regardless of their level in the organisation, should have some ability to interpret policies and procedures to suit the needs of their team.
Whilst the following list of examples isn't exhaustive, it does represent the key areas that all good managers should be examining in their pursuit of generation friendly status.
Recruitment
Can you honestly say that age is not a factor in your recruitment process? Do you baulk at the idea of employing someone who is outside the traditional age range for a position? Do you require candidates to have a specific number of years of experience in a role before you will consider them?
Age and years of experience do not necessarily equate to on the job performance. I'm reminded of the old recruiters saying that a candidate can have 5 years experience or 1 years experience repeated 5 times.
Training
Even the word can conjure up negative images for some generations, so smart managers are learning to repackage the process so it has wider appeal. Whether you give it a different name or not, you need to ensure that your training and development program has plenty of options that are all equally appealing. On the job, off site, on line, and one on one are just some of the choices you need to have available.
Using recognition of prior learning is ideal for employees of all ages because it measures what an individual can actually do rather than how well they complete assignments or concentrate for long periods of time.
Rewards and recognition
Many organisations stick with inflexible reward and recognition programs:
- Because they fear that any other system will create too much work for the staff who administer it. What's the point of an easy to administer system if it doesn't have the desired result? You may as well do nothing and save your money. In fact, badly thought out programs can actually do more harm than good.
- They worry about being accused of favouritism. If the system is clearly explained and comparisons are made between different offerings to show they are of equal value, then there'll be no cries of "that's not fair".
Performance management
The generations vary widely in their preferences for performance feedback. Builders often see performance meetings as a sign that something is wrong, Baby Boomers invented the once a year system with lots of feedback and many still prefer it, while Generation X want more regular and less formal discussions and Gen Y are showing a desire for on tap feedback with a positive focus.
So how do you meet these diverse needs and still have a functioning system? I think the answer lies with managers. As well as having a company wide system, it's important to encourage managers to add in other less formal feedback mechanisms to suit the specific needs of their team members. The goal of performance management is to maximise the performance of your team. Let's keep that as the goal rather than a system that creates the opposite reaction in people.
What about your organisation?
So how does your organisation rate on the generation friendly scale? Using a range of 1 being poor to 10 being excellent, how would you rate your policies and procedures in these key areas? If you rated highly in some, congratulations and keep up the good work. If your score was not so impressive, start thinking about what you as an individual can do to improve it.
Buy Karen Schmidt's Audio Seminar CD from the Resource Centre:
What It Takes To Engage The Generations At Work