![]() So if you've got an age-diverse workforce, you’ll be better able to understand their needs and to serve them. Guess what? Unless your product is particularly age-specific, your potential customers will be spread across that broad age spectrum we saw earlier. There’s a great benefit to bringing together people who spent most of their lives without the internet and those who’ve never known anything else-along with people like me who are somewhere in the middle. People of different ages can bring very different viewpoints, particularly in this age of rapid technological progress. Check out this research from Northwestern University for more on the benefits of diversity for problem-solving. They've got different ideas, different perspectives, different life experiences. Not only are there two or more heads, but those heads are also different. So you can see why diverse teams tend to be better at problem-solving. I’m sure you’ve heard that saying, “Two heads are better than one.” When two people come together to solve a problem, they can pool their experiences and ideas to devise a better solution. Benefits of Generational DiversityĪs with other types of diversity, generational diversity can help your company perform better in many ways. But on top of that, there are lots of benefits of having generational diversity in your business as well. Payouts can run into the thousands, so it’s important for employers to know the law and avoid discrimination based on age. If you’re treating people unfairly based on their age, you could fall foul of the law. It’s important to understand that ageism works both ways-it can mean discrimination against either older or younger workers. For example, in the UK, age discrimination laws were passed in 2006, and since then, there have been thousands of employment tribunal claims every year, indicating that ageism remains a serious issue in the workplace. Many countries have introduced laws tackling age discrimination in recent years. Some tech firms and startups, for example, have predominantly young workforces, while more traditional firms may have ageing workforces, with younger people underrepresented-particularly at the higher levels. But if there’s a big discrepancy, that’s something to be aware of. Of course, the correlation won’t be exact, particularly in small companies. Try to get roughly equal representation of each generation. Millennials value innovation and change.The Silent Generation (born before 1945, so many are now retired)Īs this article by the American Management Association points out, the generations actually have more in common than people tend to think, but the general characteristics are thought to be:.This can be quite culturally specific, but here are some categories that are popular in the U.S. It often helps to think of broader generations. So your workplace should have a similar profile, with no dramatic skewing towards particular age brackets. But generally, the profile is fairly flat for the working-age population, with little variation between the generations. Census BureauĪs you can see, there are slight bulges around the early 20s and early 50s, and the numbers start to tail off after 60. Each bar represents the number of people of a certain age, and the scale is in millions. Census Bureau showing the distribution of people of different ages in the U.S. For example, here’s a chart from the U.S. Ideally, your company should roughly reflect the composition of the overall population of your country or region. Generational diversity simply means having people of a wide range of different ages represented in the workplace. Then you’ll get some practical tips on how to embrace generational diversity at your company and avoid ageism. We’ll define the term, and then we’ll look at some of the benefits of employing different generations in the workplace, as well as some of the challenges. In today’s tutorial, we’ll take a look at generational diversity and why it’s important. Although some of the stereotypes about different generations are overblown, it’s true that people of different ages often bring very different and valuable perspectives and insights to the projects they work on. But age is another important dimension of diversity. ![]() When we talk about diversity in the workplace, we tend to focus on things like race and gender. It may not be something you’ve even noticed before. Are your colleagues or employees about the same age as you, or is there a big variation? Try not to let age be a barrier in your company. If you’re at work as you’re reading this, take a look around you.
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