A Clash Of Cultures: How To Effectively Manage Older Employees

For companies facing a labour crunch, the solution isn’t to keep hiring and replacing your workers who leave. You need to work on retaining your existing workers, and a huge part of that is engaging and managing your older employees effectively.

Regardless of whether you’re a 2nd gen business owner who’s recently taken over the reins, or a young manager who has a team of older employees under your belt, you’ll have to earn your team’s respect, and learn how to communicate effectively with them. Read on to find out how you can do just that!

#1: Get to know each employee individually

Many managers or business owners make the mistake of putting their team members in a mold, and stereotyping them based on which generation they’re from.

Here’s the thing, though…

Not all millennials are “strawberries” which give up at the earliest sign of failure. And not all baby boomers are stubborn old codgers who are stuck in their ways and refuse to embrace technology.

So get to know your team members as actual people, and recognize their individual strengths and perspectives. Running in the same vein: acknowledge that different people bring different things to the table – there’s no one generation which possesses a more important skill set than another!

#2: Put your ego aside

As a leader, you might feel as though you should know best, and your job is to tell your employees what to do. If you’re new to an industry or a company, though, the best thing to do would be to set your ego aside, and focus on learning from your older employees.

As Steve Jobs famously said: “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do. We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”

If an employee has been with your company for five, 10 or even 15 years, this means that they’re pretty good at their jobs. So go ahead and pick their brains! If there’s an issue that’s particularly challenging, ask them if they’ve faced a similar problem before, and how they solved it. If you’re thinking of coming up with a new product line, ask them if it’s feasible, and how they think your consumers will respond to it.

#3: Get their buy-in when making changes

When you’re joining a company, there’s nothing wrong with going in all guns blazing, and wanting to fix all the inadequacies that you’ve spotted.

But instead of simply telling your team that you’re pivoting and expecting them to get on with it, make sure you sit down with them, and discuss the rationale behind these changes.

Nobody likes to deal with a boss who simply issues directives, and doesn’t bother to explain why you’re changing things up. So take the time to share with your team! Tell them why the changes you’re implementing are crucial to your business goals, and address any questions or feedback that they might have. Once you get your team’s buy-in, moving ahead with your new systems, processes or projects will be a lot easier!

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