When talking about diversity, many people focus primarily on gender and ethnicity. An often looked over part of diversity, however, is age diversity. Having an age-diverse workplace is an important part of inclusion and effectiveness in the workplace; moreover, age-diverse work environments are more likely to be successful. Why else should employers focus on creating an age-diverse workforce?
Age diversity promotes improvement in work performance overall. Studies have shown that an age-diverse workplace improves the overall performance of an organization, so creating mixed-age work teams is critical to success. Likewise, having employees of various ages can help when everyone puts their brains together for complex decision-making tasks; each age bracket can bring in diverse ways of seeing the world that others may not have thought of before.
Each age group has different experiences and points of view on the world around them. Having multiple age groups in your company leaves room for innovative ideas, pulling on the strength of everyone to come up with creative and forward-thinking ideas. Each generation has different skills from one another, all of which can be brought to your business and used for the betterment of the company. Younger employees, for example, will have a better grasp of technology, while older workers will bring in strong interpersonal skills that can be used to your company’s advantage. Combining these two skills, along with many others, will strengthen your company as a whole.
Older workers can also bring traditional business skills to your company. This will help your business reach different types of customers more effectively, as they’ll have tried and true business techniques that will appeal to more traditional customers. These can then be passed on to younger employees, keeping these skills strong and benefiting your company.
Age-diverse companies have a lower employee turnover rate than those that do not. A high turnover rate can be costly and does nothing to improve morale in the workplace; rather, morale can be significantly damaged if the turnover rate is too high. With age diversity, fewer people are likely to leave the company, resulting in more skilled and experienced employees in your business. Employees who are 55 and older tend to be loyal workers too, which is another plus.
Having older employees within your company also encourages mentoring between the older and younger employees. Older workers can use their experience and pass their knowledge onto younger employees with less experience, while younger employees can teach older workers new technology and other industry-related skills. All employees can benefit from learning from one another and have the opportunity to teach the other when learning and skill-building are encouraged in the company.