Amazing Things Older Workers and Younger Workers Can Learn from One Another

There’s a cultural and technological gap between older and younger workers, but that doesn’t mean they can’t work effectively as a team. In fact, both can complement each other in various ways. 

“While older people have more experience, younger ones have fresher perspectives. Older generations earned traditional in-person education and sat through in-person meetings. However, many are not as tech-savvy as younger generations—who understand the power of social media.”, as rationalised by Shane Perry, a small business loans analyst at Max Funding.

What Older Workers Can Teach Younger Workers

Resilience: Older workers went through recessions, government transitions, and various difficult events. As a result, they have a long-range vision of things and a solid belief that hard work can help them survive.

Loyalty: Older workers tend to be more committed to one company, as long as it takes care of them. They can teach younger people that respect, camaraderie, and compassion are also important. And that sometimes, your loyalty can help a company get through a difficult patch.

Interpersonal Skills: Those who grew before the age of computers are highly interpersonal. While technological knowledge is crucial, customers, partners, stakeholders, and affiliates are also impressed with common courtesy, humour, eloquence, etc.

Independence: Parents and communities take care of a person for years. Now that younger workers on their own, older colleagues can show them that they’re also capable of independence.Patience: According to a study, millennials tend to be impatient in their workplace, with over 90% of them demanding rapid career progression. Older workers can show them that hard work pays off and that there’s joy in waiting.

What Younger Workers Can Teach Older Workers

New Technology: This is probably the area where most younger people excel. From computers and mobile phones to cameras and all sorts of software, younger ones tend to more comfortable with them—they’re also compelled to learn how. They’ll be glad to teach older colleagues some skills.

Flexibility: In the past, adults had to stick to a job that they’d studied for. Today, it’s normal to see people working on jobs that’s far from what they pursued in college. The younger generation can teach the older ones that their current skills may be not as valuable tomorrow—so they have to learn new ones and give importance to upskilling.

Risk Taking: Young people tend to be risk takers because they have fresher perspectives and newfound motivation. They also tend to be more entrepreneurial as opposed to older generations that are used to yielding to corporate hierarchies and processes. 

Job Hopping: There was a time when employees that hopped from one company to another were labelled incompetent. Career changes might be unthinkable for some older workers. Young people can help them understand that it could be what they need to have more fulfilling careers. Here’s how to have a smooth career transition.

Diversity: Over the past twenty decades, we’ve seen dramatic changes across the globe that resulted in more diverse backgrounds and households. Having a diverse workforce is great for increasing creativity and productivity. Older workers can get a closer look at the changing world through younger colleagues.

Workplace diversity provides an organisation with different perspectives, which is crucial in creating diverse solutions. There is also a pool of creative and innovative ideas, from the combined standpoints. Diverse workplaces also tend to have increased employee engagement, increased employee retention, and better understanding of customers. You’ll also better understand customers if your team is also made up of a diverse range of people—just like a true society.

Career Money Life is an award-winning, innovative career transition, and career development service provider that does things differently, on purpose. Our transition to retirement program helps create a congenial work environment for diverse needs. We help companies create unique pathways to retain older workers – allowing them to transition to flexible or part-time work, or into volunteering with ease. Book a demo with us to learn more about our transition to retirement package. 

Written by:
Jett Davis Hayes