Engaging an Age-Diverse Workplace: Revisiting a Business Opportunity and Challenge

摘要

Diversity is an important component of business success, contributing to “quality decision making” [1] as well as the flexibility, adaptability, and innovation so necessary to global competitiveness [2]. While diversity in the workplace is not new, it is becoming a topic of increasing importance as the cost and benefit of recruiting and retaining qualified personnel that can work together, as well as understand and respect each other, is becoming increasingly clear: “With demographic shifts, advances in technology and communications, and globalization, diversity is quickly becoming a driver of growth around the world” [3]. Workplace diversity is fast becoming a competitive advantage. Age is one version of diversity that has become particularly important in a workplace now representing four generations [4-6]. With Baby Boomers often choosing to stay in the workforce and the increased workforce participation of Generation Y, there are many different age cohorts working together [7]. With businesses facing the challenges and opportunities of managing across the generations, a body of literature has emerged that presents an alarmist picture marked by such headings as “Generational Divide” [8]; “Four Generations- One Workplace - Can We All Work Together?” [9] “Coddled, confident, and cocky: The Challenges of Managing Gen Y” [10]; “Bridging the Divide” [11]; and “Young, old, and in-between: Can we all get along?”[12]. Although increasingly businesses are working to realize their diversity advantage by addressing cultural and communications differences across the generations, they remain hampered by poorly conceived diversity programs [13]. Here in the context of an open access journal, we share some conceptual tools for learning across our differences to rethink the hyperbole and better celebrate age diversity. We focus on how and why communications is overlooked, how it has remained peripheral despite claims about its centrality to business success, and how it may be better integrated in the effective management of an age-diverse workforce.