Ways to Bridge the Generation Gap in a Mature Workforce
According to research, one of the rapidly growing segments in the labor market today is older workers. By 2024, there will be an older age range in the workforce at 55 years old or older. For this reason, many companies need to develop better strategies for training, recruiting, and managing employees when the inrush of older workers occurs.
Thankfully, people are more open about hiring a diverse age range of employees, believing that they can contribute their skills and talent to the company. Stereotypical beliefs that older workers are difficult to train and less productive have been debunked. Many have shown that hiring older workers has many benefits since they have many experiences to share to help develop your company.
For example, IT companies will experience an influx of older workers in the next few years. And because of this, these companies are developing strategic IT staffing methods to hire the best team for the years to come.
If you’re curious about how you can develop a mature workforce for the near future, keep reading. This article will share different ways to bridge the generation gap and accommodate older workers in your company. Let’s get to it!
1. Be open to retraining your employees
Sadly, many companies hesitate to invest in proper training and development programs for older people, thinking they’ll retire soon. However, you should know that retraining your good workers is cost-effective and a better investment than recruiting new members.
When you retrain your older employees, you allow them to sharpen their skills again and prepare them to adapt to the new trends in the industry quickly. This type of investment will decrease your turnover rate, saving you loads on training and recruitment expenses.
2. Make work more meaningful and purposeful
When people get older, smaller things in life matter more. So when you have more senior workers, you’ll notice that pay and benefits matter less, and to them, meaningful work matters more. They thrive when they know that they have a sense of purpose in a company.
By creating a meaningful work environment for older employees, they’ll know that you acknowledge their efforts and that you can use their experience in further developing your business. You can do this by setting goals and allowing them to execute projects to achieve them.
3. Recruit older employees
Most companies miss out on opportunities of finding better talent by ignoring older applicants. Remind your HR team and management to let go of any bias and stop discriminating against applicants based on their age. Besides that, remind them to forget the stereotypes connected to older people, such as having challenges with tech-related tasks, because that’s not entirely true.
If you have an IT company, it’s always best to have a strategic IT staffing method when your HR team needs to recruit employees. Your HR team can start by letting go of biases, changing their job description tone and language, and completely disregarding an applicant’s age.
Conclusion
Knowing these three essential tips to bridge the generation gap in a workforce, you’ll be able to create a working environment that’s welcoming to all cultures, genders, and ages. Having an open work environment will allow your employees to fully be themselves, making them more productive and learning from each other based on experiences.
By developing strategic IT staffing methods, you’ll find the best employees for your team, no matter the age. So be more welcome to older workers; you’ll be surprised by the fresh approaches and knowledge they can bring to the table!
Technical Paradigm is an IT job staffing agency that offers recruiting-as-a-service to fill IT roles for startups and large corporations. Build your ideal IT team today!