Five generations at work: How we win together, for good
LBS Leadership Institute shines a light on the gains to be made by a more progressive and inclusive approach to the intergenerational workforce
“We are at an unprecedented time in history, in the confluence of force factors of climate, geopolitics, technology and more. We are also witnessing firsts in both intergenerational and intragenerational shifts – the next decades will see the largest wealth transfer in history, and for the first time in history we have five generations in work.
“And yet, narratives around generations have become warped and weaponised through bias and stereotypes. And this matters, as we are at an inflection point in the convergence of forces and flux that will challenge us, as businesses, as society – as humanity at large.”
These are the opening lines of new book Five Generations at Work: How we win together, for good, by best-selling authors Rebecca Robins and Patrick Dunne. At a recent LBS Leadership Institute event, we had an opportunity to unpack some of the findings.
Together with an intergenerational panel of speakers, Patrick Dunne OBE discussed how today’s leaders might best navigate the opportunities and challenges that arise from having five generations active in the workforce at the same time.
Randall S Peterson, Academic Director of the Leadership Institute and Professor of Organisational Behaviour at LBS, hosted the event, which featured insights from Dame Mary Marsh, Non-Executive Director and a founding Patron of the EY Foundation; Kathryn Eastwood, Director of Income and Employer Partnerships at EY Foundation, and Maria Owusu Mensah, Commercial Analyst at BP and former Co-Chair of EY Foundation’s Youth Advisory Board. Together they discussed the benefits that can be derived from more integrated ways of working and from seeing intergenerational differences in a more inclusive way.
The key learnings were:
Opportunities with age diversity are the same as with other forms of diversity – different perspectives, different skillsets and helpful challenge
Challenges that need to be overcome include having an awareness of generationally different language and unconscious bias
Employing a maximising mindset facilitates an understanding of why someone might think differently.
Ultimately, there is a lot more opportunity than challenge, and the challenges that do exist are workable if the work is put in. As Rebecca Robins and Patrick Dunne so succinctly write in their book “In valuing the human difference of each generation, we can rethink the dynamics of different generations as contributing to more connected, collaborative, and competitive organisations, drawing, rather than draining strength from multiple generations.”
