Managing a Multi-Generational Workforce

I remember going to visit my grandparents in Calcutta - it was not called Kolkata then. The grandparents, my parents, their siblings and their kids and eventually the kids of the erstwhile kids. Everyone came together under one roof for the two summer months, turning four nuclear families into one joint family. Chaotic and unruly at times, but definitely a lot of fun. That was my first taste of a joint family. The summer months had the same predictable pattern. My grandma was an avid story teller. My cousins and I would sit around and listen to the same stories every year... fascinated. Then we became teenagers. The stories seemed repetitive. We wanted to do cool stuff or else we would be awfully bored. So my grandparents took on the responsibility of taking us to see some English film about Tarzan. My cousins and I rummaged through the old Tarzan comics in anticipation. I don't remember the name of the film, but in this film Tarzan was spending disproportionate amount of time coochie-cooing with Jane than the apes. My grandparents shunted us out of the movie within the first ten minutes so as to prevent us teenagers from being corrupted by such films. We were all disappointed because we were just beginning to be curious about such stuff and welcomed any knowledge updates. Four generations of people living under the same roof was chaotic. Everything got amplified. The fights were louder. We had to share everything - from the books to the goodies. Most of the fights were around the question of who was getting all the privileges. Despite the chaos it was a lot of fun. The adventures got more daring every year. After a few weeks of this chaotic loud living, summer would come to an end and with the first spray of the monsoons, I would return back to Delhi and settle down to a quieter life. The cousins wrote letters to each other. The letters were all about how we would be spending the next summer. Despite the chaos, we all missed being together and waited impatiently for the year to go by. We would make notes of stories we would need to share with the cousins when we would meet. By the time we did, those stories seemed meaningless. Then one day, it all started to change. Grandma passed away and then grandpa followed. Then some aunts. The cousins moved out to different countries as they went to college and started to work. And then the other day, there was feeling of deja vu. I knew I had seen it all before. Except that this time it was multiple generations in the workplace.How did this multi generation workplace come to be? In a growing economy, there is ever increasing urbanization. Like in India.   There is a massive amount of migration that is happening. The issue of Outlook Magazine dated Aug 23, 2010 talks about 98.3 million Indians who migrated within India for jobs - all within the span of a decade. An increasing obsession with learning the English language is certainly contributing to the urbanization of India - with its attendant pitfalls. Interestingly enough while the incidence of the joint family as a way of living is threatened with this migration, it is creating a the equivalent of a joint family in the workplace.The proportion of Indians aged under 15 or over 64 has declined from 69% in 1995 to 56% this year, says the UN. India’s working-age population will increase by 136m by 2020; China’s will grow by a mere 23m, says Morgan StanleyA population pyramid, also called an age structure diagram, is a graphical illustration that shows the distribution of various age groups in a human population (typically that of a country or region of the world), which normally forms the shape of a pyramid. It consists of two back-to-back bar graphs, with the population plotted on the X-axis and age on the Y-axis, one showing the number of males and one showing females in a particular population in five-year age groups (also called cohorts). Males are conventionally shown on the left and females on the right, and they may be measured by raw number or as a percentage of the total population.A look at the population pyramids of any country can give you a good idea of what the issues at the workplace are going to be. The pyramids of India, UK and US in the year 2020 are put here in that order to establish what the workplace issues will be in 2020. While the Indian population distribution looks somewhat like the organizational pyramid, it also means that unless decision making opportunities flow down in those organizations, there will be a sharper divide in the workplace between those who make the rules (a small number of "seniors") and those who get impacted by those rules - usually the majority of the employees in the organization. In a world where the tech-savvy youth often have more access to information and also equally prone to sharing it with the rest of the world, the workplace tensions are going to rise. Especially if the decision makers do not build regular channels of communication with all the generations in the workforce. There is a tendency in all of us to communicate more with people who are like us. The leaders in the organizations have to now learn to communicate more with employees who are totally unlike them. Here are three opportunities more experienced employees can use to manage younger employees better:1. Tell Them WHY: The under-30-year old employees (known as Gen Y or Millennials)  like to be told why they need to do something. They hate doing busywork.Tell them why their role matters in the organization. And how their role plays an important part in the organizations success.2. Tell Them HOW: The Millennials are a lot more savvy in communicating with people through technology. Bulk of their communication has been with peer groups. They are a tad awkward when it comes to dealing with older employees and with hierarchy. So coach them how to handle situations that involve face to face contact and dealing with formal situations. They will appreciate the time you invest.3. Give Them Feedback: The Millennials have all grown up with technology that gives them instant feedback. They send a text message on the phone and they know when it is sent. They send someone a chat message. The response is instantaneous. So don't wait to give them feedback once a month. They need it several times a day. They are used to getting that attention from their parents. So they expect the same in the workplace. That also makes them feel valued.You can read more tips to manage the Millennial Generation here and here and hereHow do we deal with employees when you are younger than the ones you manage? Look at the Population Pyramids in UK and US in 2020. They will have a different workplace mix. So workplace policies will get challenged more often. What works for one cohort will not appeal to someone else. Many countries like Germany and France have extended the retirement age. In US the age at which Social Security kicks in has been pushed by a few years despite protests. The recession has eaten away at the nest egg and forced many people to work for more years than what they expected to. Clearly there are not enough young people entering the workforce in these economies to make sure there is a favorable age-dependency ie a ratio of those typically not in the labor force (the dependent part) and those typically in the labor force (the productive part). The organizations will have to customize policies much more. Here are some tips to manage older employees:1. Question your own assumptions about older employees: They also value getting recognized. They value getting coached and trained. They may not be looking to get progressed in the same way that the younger employees do. Ask them what they would want from their careers.2. Ask them to mentor and get mentored: You can pair up an older employee with a millennial in dual-mentoring relationships. The younger employee can help to get the older employee become more comfortable with technology. The older employee can mentor the millennial in workplace skills.3. Make sure the benefits meet their needs: The older employees value health related benefits. Make sure your organization addresses their needs through the benefits program. All older workers do not have the same needs. So ask them what they value most.You can learn more about how to manage older workers by reading the article here or watch this video by Peter Cappelli, Wharton School or from his interview at Knowledge@Wharton hereA multi generational workforce provides us opportunities to test our assumptions of employees who are "not quite like us". The workplace will resemble the noisy chaotic times when four generations of the same family decide to take a holiday together. Who decides what is a fun activity to do together? Who takes the final call on the venue or the food? If that is the challenge we face within the family, imagine the same diversity of generations in the workplace. The majority of us think that our way of doing things is the only rational way. In business, as well as in personal life, that is just not true.------------Population Pyramids for different countries can be found at http://www.nationmaster.com/country/Read this article in The Economist http://www.economist.com/node/17145035Read more about the migrant Indians