How To Match Corporate Trainers With Employees Of Different Generations

This is in the similar tone and theme of the post a couple of days back, where I cover Plaseed.com, a talent development consultancy I had been running for six years. Today's topic is a little technical, and unless you're in Human Resources, Learning & Development or looking to train your team, it may be slightly irrelevant. Then again, who am I to judge? The info here could be useful if you're looking to connect better with your teams from different generations. :)

If there’s one thing that we all have to come to terms with is the fact that today’s workforce comes with different age groups from different generations and background. How does a woman in her 40’s define fashion, how does a 23-year old view music and how does one person identify the term “teammate”? The idea of “goal” appeals more to some generations more than others and as much as you want to deny the generational tension, it is your job to be aware of it and help employees recognise that everyone has different sets of skills, strength and experiences and that everyone has something to bring to the table.

If you're looking to train your staff, or hire an external consultant to do that, here are a few areas that you may want to be mindful off, so that you can foster a better match between the trainer (or yourself) and the staff.

#####1. Stop Dwelling On Differences

The Millennial kids who consumes Facebook and Instagram feeds for breakfast. The Baby Boomers who are full of blind loyalty and never seem to want to retire. The Gen-Xers who’s always putting themselves first .iGENs born after at the turn of the century, who appears to be biologically tied to their smartphones 24/7 like an umbilical cord.

Truthfully there really isn’t any evidence that a 37-year old manager is any different than a manager back in the day. Ultimately everyone matures and develops themselves to become a better version of themselves when they first started out. Trainers should not assume that every generation needs special treatment - get to know everyone individually and start connecting, so you can guide them better. Develop employees to adapt to the changing business environment and use that to grow your workforce.

Though we can generalise about the key characteristics of the different generations, we may tend to use them as judgement or generalised statements instead. I did a piece on this a while back on how we may have viewed the generation groups differently. So, it's better for the trainer, or yourself to just put your judgements and prejudices aside, and work on understanding the participants.

#####2. Encourage And Build Collaborative Relationships

Let us look into the future. Knowing that the Boomer kids will soon leave the workforce taking years of valuable experience with them, you need to leverage the inter-generational experience and create a succession plan, build a collaborative relationship culture, or mentorship programs within the organisation.

An age-diverse team that is effectively managed, will produce an energised team and boost workplace morale. When a team is able to work and adapt to the diverse generational culture, individuals will realise that leveraging on each other’s experience will result in superior performance. Train the older employees to guide the younger employees. A well-planned mentoring programme will allow non-institutional knowledge to flow on to the next generation.

#####3. Identify Existing Age Stereotypes

Age stereotypes are like cancer in your organisation. Like many cancers, if not eliminated fast, the “it’s not my job” mindset will appear, teams will be so disconnected from each other so much so that your entire team will be super dysfunctional and silos will start lurking like snakes.

An example of a stereotype is that “she is old and she’s too slow.” In a lot of these situations, teams need employees of this age group. It could mean that even though she is slow, her work is probably tedious and meticulous, ensuring that delivery is efficient and that organisations won’t be wasting time fixing errors as a result of rushed work. There’s a reason why she’s still there. Her years of experience and knowing the organisation since its beginning is the most valuable asset an organization can have.

Go ahead, kill the cancer!

#####4. Scan Communication Styles

Assess how employees communicate with each other and how they receive information from each other. Knowing this piece of information will help you as managers, or trainers to deliver your training efficiently where everyone is included and that no one is left out.

In today’s workplace, there are tonnes of ways to communicate and deliver information. Despite the company having multi-generational employees, it doesn’t mean there’s only one style for each generation. Ultimately it depends on the subject matter, topic, time and cost.

Take multinational organisations for example. On many occasions, your colleagues, teammates and bosses may not all be in the same country. But you still need everyone to attend a certain training together so you can share feedback with each other. In this case, a webinar could be one solution.

That said, don’t be surprised that the most non-tech-savvy looking 50-year old guy knows way more about setting up webinars and how to check-in then those millennial kids. There’s always a style that everyone can agree to.

Remember This!

Do:

• Experiment with mixed age groups and cater your training to allow interaction between older employees and younger employees.
• Create incentive plans with employees current lives in mind.
• Conduct regular surveys to keep up to date with your company’s changing demographics.

Don’t:

• Be a top-down manager. Create partnerships with all teammates, regardless of their age and encourage them to share opinions.
• Assume you already know how to motivate employees. Be interested in what they expect and want from their professional lives.
• Acknowledge generation-based employees!

Case Study: Train employees in their “language”

Pos Malaysia - Malaysia’s national postal service established since the 1800s. Today Pos Malaysia has many business units comprising of units such as Pos Laju, Datapos, Pos International, Pos ArRahnu, Pos Digicert, Pos Solutions and Pos Online. Within that, Pos Malaysia also caters to counter services such as car license renewal, utility bill payments as well as insurance services over the counter. Almost 90% of Pos Malaysia’s employee demographics consists of various age groups from across 4 different generations and most of them are Malays working in over 400 branches nationwide.

In 2011, Pos Malaysia realised that the insurance portion of their business is growing. So how did they train employees from all over the country, who are mostly made up of Malays, speaking mostly the Malay language and are made up of old and young?

They hired an insurance company with expert insurance trainers who are Malays that can basically speak and train in the “Bahasa Pasar” (informal Malay way of speaking) to relate to both old and young staff stationed at counters and one who knows the Malay culture enough to connect with the different age groups.

The older employees for example values politeness, and are more soft spoken, while the younger ones are more energetic and are mostly excited, determined and are always a jovial bunch. When it comes to communicating, the older employees have a rather formal style of speaking in Malay whilst the younger employees would rather converse in the “Bahasa Pasar”. The fact that their trainers were able to connect with them on that level was the very core reason the Pos Malaysia employees were motivated and committed to selling insurance successfully.

If we haven’t already learned the frequent changes in today’s dynamic workforce, there really isn’t a one-size fits all prescription.

I hope you have gained some insights on how to navigate through the various generational issues and share these tips with anyone you know who might find this useful.

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