How can companies harness the power of age diversity?

Does your company have an inclusive culture and diverse hiring practices? If not, you could be missing out on a huge number of significant benefits.

By appreciating, nurturing and welcoming older generations within the workplace, alongside a full spectrum of age groups, your organisation can foster diverse skills and benefit from a wide range of unique viewpoints.

This can help you better represent your customers, come up with innovative ideas and ultimately, do things differently to your competitors. Remember that diversity is strength, as it helps your organisation adapt, innovate, survive and thrive – no matter what comes your way.

Steps for harnessing the power of age diversity in the workplace

Companies of all types and sizes can harness the power of age diversity, in a number of ways. The following are some useful starting points as you develop your new age diversity strategy:

• Mentoring which connects different age groups, and people with different backgrounds and experience. And of course, different viewpoints. The aim is to encourage people of different age groups to learn from each other.
• Incorporate insights gleaned from mentoring sessions into training and development to spread the benefits across the organisation.
• Identify the barriers which prevent older people staying in the workforce, or feeling welcome and valued within the organisation. For example, a lack of support for employees going through menopause, or workers who need to refresh their digital skills in order to use systems and technology within the business.
• Review your hiring practices, to make sure that older candidates aren’t being excluded from processes that are influenced by age bias. It can be difficult to do, but being aware of unconscious stereotyping and assumptions when interviewing and assessing older workers is the first step.
• Pinpoint the specific strengths of employees of different generations, so that you can build teams with complementary skills and knowledge. This helps to create cohesive multi-disciplinary teams with the strength and depth to overcome any obstacle.

By embracing and fully committing to age diversity, companies can tap into a wider range of perspectives, insights and abilities. This can lead to enhanced creativity and innovation, and ultimately help the organisation successfully achieve its goals.

But in order to do so, barriers need to be overcome, and change won’t happen overnight. It’s crucial to develop a strategy for promoting age diversity across your business, and to take tangible and measurable steps to achieve your targets. Walk the walk, as the saying goes.

If your organisation needs help with specific diversity or other hiring strategies, get in touch with our executive search specialists here at Bailey Montagu.