COMPLIANCE
Adapt your style Once managers understand the needs, wants and expectations of their age diverse team members, they will need to adapt their management and leadership style to meet their needs. This is likely to have a positive impact on team members’ engagement at work as they will feel valued, listened to and recognised for their uniqueness. Adapting communication styles is a great way to meet various needs by offering different methods for teams to converse e.g. via phones, instant messaging, emails, video calls or in person. Agree together which ways best suit the individuals and team as a collective to ensure the stereotypical barriers are broken down and everyone has the opportunity to be informed and influence ways of working. Openly encourage flexible working and professional development to help with attracting and retaining an age diverse team, ensuring succession plans are in place to plan for future workforce changes. Promote benefits and policies that support people at different times of their lives to support work-life balance, well-being and to recognise the diverse needs of the team. Understand the benefits There are several benefits which come with getting to know the needs of your team and adapting your approach. A diverse team comes with a diverse set of views that are likely to be representative of your customers and their needs. Actively seeking the views of age diverse teams will provide insights which can only support your organisation’s objective to enable the growth of the business by encouraging innovation and proactively meeting the needs of the customers. An age diverse team comes with a wide range of knowledge, experience and skills that everyone in the team can benefit from; whether it’s older employees’ experience of introducing new benefits or younger
has already been mentioned in this article as a benefit so let’s also recognise that engagement is multifaceted as lots of factors impact upon engagement; but as engaged employees are said to perform 22% better than non-engaged employees, they’re more likely to give discretionary effort and it can only benefit your team and your customers if this adaptive approach is taken. High employee engagement because of increased belonging has other benefits too, including general happiness, a positive impact on well-being and people feeling more fulfilled at work. You only know if you know A lot of changes will have happened in the past which your older employees with longer tenure will know and understand because they will have lived through it, including legislation updates, government interventions or organisational decisions. What an incredible opportunity for shared learning, perhaps through cross-mentoring schemes to not only upskill team members but also to bridge a perceived empathy gap and create opportunities for people to find similarities, rather than differences. This also provides an opportunity to pool knowledge, skills and experiences, because while it can be
Seeking multi-generational approaches to maintaining networks, seeking solutions and collaborative working can actively encourage problem solving and innovation. In summary, managing an age diverse team may create some challenges for managers as there can be differing viewpoints, values, work and communication styles. But if we embrace these as positive personal needs and preferences, we create inclusive high- performing teams and cultures that not only recognise and value age diversity but also embrace the uniqueness of the whole person. n Links corner 5 Generations in the Workplace: Their Values and Differences | Indeed.com: https://ow.ly/1qU250Rnj20 Age diversity | CIPD: https://ow.ly/ bL0a50RnjzH Employee Engagement Does More than Boost Productivity (hbr.org): https://ow.ly/ZVug50RnjCR.
impossible to know all the facts all the time in reward and payroll terms, a high- performing team would know who to ask or where to find the information needed.
workers’ support to introduce self- service technology, everyone stands to gain from shared learning. Employee engagement
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| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward |
Issue 101 | June 2024
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