Making the most of a multi-generational workforce

Nick Martindale

With the abolition of the default retirement age, the decline of defined benefit pension schemes and the raising of the state pension age, the UK is now starting to see predictions of an older workforce become reality, as more people accept they need to work later into life.

For recruiters, this presents a number of challenges as well as opportunities, both in how they run their own businesses and manage their staff, and also in the advice and guidance they provide to clients.

One obvious issue is that of managing multiple generations – potentially as many as four – in the workplace at the same time, with younger individuals sometimes managing those who are many years their senior. Figures from Axa suggest this is already happening; 49% of people in a recent study said they had a younger line manager.

“Older people are downshifting to lower-level jobs but still want or need to work for longer so may want entry-level work,” says Sue Honore, associate research consultant at Ashridge Business School. “Young people may lack experience in how to deal with conflict or family issues in this group, while older people may not be used to being managed by a very young person.” She suggests encouraging greater interaction between age groups to help overcome such issues, including mixed-age projects or workshops where people with different strengths can be paired together.

In some sectors, such as digital, recruiters and their clients have had to address these issues for some time, on account of the relatively new nature of the industry and the young demographic of the people it tends to attract.

“The new generation of online marketers, coders and technical experts has emerged at such a pace that in many businesses they have overtaken those in more traditional offline roles,” says Steve Thompson, managing director of digital and marketing recruiter Forward Role. “In some businesses older and more experienced marketers find themselves managed by people half their age.” In time, clients have got used to this, he says, although there are some which resist it.

Benefits of diversity

Yet having a diverse age range in the business can be hugely beneficial, to both recruitment firms and their clients. The Axa survey found over half (55%) of those aged under 50 thought knowledge-sharing was a benefit of working with older people, while 51% of those above the age of 50 said younger workers brought a different perspective to the job.

Being able to share knowledge around the organisation can certainly help staff of all ages. “Any mix of employees that brings breadth of skill and experience across the organisation is of great benefit, including a multi-generation workforce,” says Lynne Stephen, director of construction and engineering recruiter Maxwell Bruce. She gives the example of younger workers helping older people get to grips with digital technology, as well as older staff being able to mentor those with less experience.

For some organisations, having a more varied age demographic for employees can make that business more representative of its customer base. The retail sector is a good example here, says Emma-Claire Kavanagh, director of executive recruitment firm BIE, drawing on its experience around issues such as the gender mix. “Mobile phone company Three deliberately staffed all their stores with tech-savvy, young, mostly male, assistants until they realised that this didn’t reflect a large proportion of their customer base and instead recruited more mature, female staff,” she points out. “Retailers in general seem to be much more attuned to the advantages of a multi-generational workforce.”

Encouraging knowledge transfer

In some sectors, the fact there are older employees looking to work for longer can help to tackle skill shortages, providing a source of additional talent for both recruiters and their clients. “Employers are all too aware that there are skills shortages in many areas,” says Kate Russell, HR specialist.

“It’s not just in areas like mechanics and engineers, transport and logistics, and nursing staff. It’s also proving difficult to source a reliable talent pipeline in many professional areas such as teaching and medicine, which have been over-subscribed in the past. If we don’t give some thought to managing our older workers effectively we will lose a huge amount of experience, knowledge and key skills through downsizing and retirement.”

This is a particular issue in sectors such as oil and gas, where a large proportion of the workforce is approaching retirement age and there is a shortage of talent coming through to replace them, says Louise Bancroft, operations manager UK, Europe & Africa, at Air Energi. “It is critical to be open-minded about candidates continuing to work beyond the traditional retirement age,” she says.

“In parallel, it’s vital to focus on attracting new talent while encouraging the experienced workforce to support their training and development. Oil and gas businesses should prioritise achieving knowledge transfer from those with significant expertise to those nearer the start of their careers.”

The role of recruiters

Recruiters, meanwhile, need not only to be aware of the opportunities a more diverse workforce can bring but also prepared to have such discussions with clients, sometimes overcoming a more traditional mindset around the type of person they are looking for.

This could even extend to encouraging clients to change how they go about recruiting for particular roles, suggests Michael Bennett, managing director of the Rethink Group. “For recruitment and talent management firms, success is now dependent on being able to educate clients on the differing needs of the four generations and arguably work much more closely with businesses to develop a talent strategy,” he says.

“The very best recruiters will work closely with the employer to ensure they not only appreciate what resonates with each generation, but that they also understand that this will, in many cases, result in four subtly different job specs targeting each generation. It’s simply no longer feasible to take a client’s job spec and run with it.”

Skills shortages could even be the catalyst that eventually sees recruiters, clients and employees view age in a different manner, believes Honore. “Where there are skills shortages, companies may start looking more widely for people and pick some unexpected candidates, who become very successful,” she predicts.

“Those pioneers may not realise it, but they will be leading the way in looking at the individual and his or her talents and potential, rather than their age.”