How to Engage a Multigenerational Workforce

Our current labor market is increasingly diverse in every sense of the word, including diversity of employee ages. As a business owner, you may simultaneously see baby boomers delaying retirement as Generation X joins leadership—with millennials on their heels as Generation Z enters the workforce.

According to the Harvard Business Review, many workers now seek to extend their working lives beyond the traditional retirement age. That's why engaging and retaining vital talent through generational diversity can yield strategic benefits for any business. We've outlined the background and benefits of each generation to help you get started.

Understanding the multigenerational workforce

Each age cohort—from baby boomers to Generation Z—brings unique opportunities for improvement in productivity, adaptability and skills to the workplace.

Understanding how to bring out the best of each generation can help your business achieve its goals more effectively. In fact, businesses that value and lead diversity equity will find themselves in a better position to adapt to emerging market trends and maintain a steady, effective workforce.

Here are the approximate birth year ranges for each of these generations, give or take a year across various sources:

• Baby boomers: 1946 to 1964
• Generation X: 1965 to 1980
• Millennials: 1981 to 1996
• Generation Z: 1997 to 2012
• Generation Alpha: 2012 to 2025

Baby boomers

Some baby boomers started working toward their career aspirations later in life, compared to previous generations. As a result, they're usually in no hurry to retire and can shine in a competitive, goal-oriented environment.

Skills of baby boomers likely include:

• Responsiveness to defined hierarchies and decisive management styles
• Respect of traditional requirement of putting in time on the job—office hours and working years—to advance professionally
• Success with projects with clear, strategic directives

The World Health Organization predicts that by 2030, one in six people in the world will be at least 60 years old. And because baby boomers are roughly in their 60s to 80s, many from this generation may require flexibility at work due to health, aging concerns or meeting their medical needs.

Flexibility and adapting to a hybrid working environment can benefit employers and employees of all ages. As baby boomers shift into retirement, they may prefer a phased retirement in which they work past the age of eligibility for Social Security benefits, while gradually reducing work hours.

A phased retirement approach for baby boomers may help maintain access to their knowledge, experience and skills while also giving them an opportunity to mentor younger workers. This beneficial arrangement could also help them feel valued and respected.

Generation X

Once disruptors and gate crashers, the first wave of Generation X—public figures like rapper and actor Queen Latifah, Vice President Kamala Harris and Spanx creator Sara Blakely—is now transitioning to middle age. Many are also transitioning to leadership roles.

Because this cohort came of age with the internet, Generation X straddles the line between remembering a world before connectivity and still feeling as comfortable online as the internet natives who were born after them.

They also understand the workplace expectations of the baby boomer generation—like the focus on individual work, importance of face time and employee loyalty—as well as the expectations of younger generations like collaboration, remote work and the need for a greater purpose.

Thus, Generation X workers can be particularly valuable with multitasking skills such as:

• Well-honed face-to-face and digital communication skills
• A hardworking, entrepreneurial mindset
• Reliability as adept collaborators and networkers, as well as the ability to work independently

Generation X is more concerned about their finances than any other generation in our workforce. They were among the first generation to have both high student loan balances and the expectation of footing the entire bill for milestones like buying homes and retirement.

One way to retain this generation's loyalty is by offering competitive salaries and benefit packages. Robert Half's 2024 Salary Guide is one of several resources that can help determine competitive salary ranges for various occupations.

You could also delegate more responsibility and opportunities for advancement while empowering your employees to explore creative solutions, even if it's not how things are usually done.

Millennials

As the largest living generation, millennials developed a reputation for being eager to advance professionally based on credentials and performance rather than seniority. They're the most educated generation to enter the workforce and have likely taken a significant amount of educational debt to do it. As they rapidly emerge as the backbone of the economy and the leadership talent pool, it's important to take a more nuanced look at millennials.

Millennials prefer productivity to face time so they can be reliable innovators and drivers of efficiency. Exploring employee retention strategies may help you attract and keep your employees feeling supported and set up for success. For millennials, work is part of life but not the center of it, and they refuse to accept traditional workplace expectations that their parents and grandparents had.

Retaining this generation of rising leadership talent can be a tall order for employers who are uncomfortable with the ways workplace expectations are changing. They're well aware that they can find higher pay, more flexible hours, more compassionate bosses and more fulfilling work elsewhere.

As with every generation, millennials want to feel valued and respected. You can cultivate their loyalty by offering competitive pay, respecting their work-life balance, providing meaningful engagement and highlighting the greater purpose of your business and its positive impact on the community.

Generation Z

Now that the oldest members of Generation Z are entering the workforce, informational insights are still forming on how this group may function as employees. It's a good idea to avoid generalizing these workers, and time will tell how they respond to employment in the post-pandemic world.

Generation Z tends to be comfortable with technology and change because they grew up online and have lived through a number of seismic shifts in society and culture. As a result, they're in a unique position to adapt well as your business grows.

Such a high tolerance for change also means Generation Z workers may be uniquely suited to propose creative solutions to problems. Keeping them informed with measurable and trackable feedback may result in strong performance outcomes.

Generation Z is generally familiar with diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, and may be interested in cultivating an inclusive work culture. You might consider encouraging DEI programs or women in leadership to help keep younger employees engaged. While a higher salary may be found elsewhere, a great DEI initiative may not. Plus, this type of initiative can be a win-win for your business as diverse teams tend to have better outcomes.

Generation Alpha

The world's next leaders, the members of Generation Alpha are already prepping to enter the workforce. Born during a technology revolution, this cohort is proficient in multitasking across complex apps and monitors and may prefer freelancing and leading passion projects as influencers rather than working the traditional 9-to-5 schedule. Adapting to fully remote schedules may attract productive, energetic workers that can help your business lead its objectives and balance their needs outside of work.

Because time and creativity are underlying powers of business, Generation Alpha have learned the value of exploring the realm of what's possible. Designing with AI and leveraging the latest technology will most likely be their go-to to approach for efficient, creative solutions.

They may also be aware and passionate about mental and universal health efforts. You can get ahead by researching the social determinants of health when adapting competitive pay and benefits packages for your employees, and it could help to get to know their needs so you can meet them where they are.

Cultured by social media and possibly raised by parents who are influencers or full-time vloggers, Generation Alpha may be eager to learn the ins and outs of your business needs and the teamwork it takes to help it succeed. They could benefit from a reskilling employees program and should be encouraged to bring innovative ideas that engage their peers in collaborative forums.

Embracing generational diversity

Harnessing the best of what each generation has to offer is only the beginning of building your framework for success in the workplace. It's also important to embrace that each employee has their own unique strengths.

While each generation has a different preferred method of communication, make sure you're reaching potential candidates where they are—use word of mouth, job board postings and social media rather than a single recruitment method to attract talent.

Remember to place your employees in roles where they'll shine rather than ones that go against their inclinations. Just because someone is part of a certain generation doesn't mean they'll have all the traits of their age cohort.

The bottom line

Understanding each employee's unique needs and goals is essential to success. The key is acknowledging and engaging generational differences to help you identify what motivates each employee to bring their best self at work.

When employees of all generations feel this value, they're more likely to resist the call of greener pastures elsewhere—keeping your business on sound footing to achieve long-term success and become greater than the sum of its parts.