How to Encourage Multiple Generations to Work Together in Your Workplace by Jean Cabunco

If your business is like most businesses, you have people on staff from every age group, from those fresh out of school to those almost ready to retire. On the surface, it seems like everyone should pull together and work for the benefit of the company – and they may desire to do so. However, subconscious and unvoiced prejudices against other age groups do impact a team’s ability to work together. If your business can crack the formula for encouraging multiple generations to work seamlessly together at your company, you’ll enjoy a more unified staff that can perform faster and more productively.

It takes an expert to coax these misconceptions people have about other generations to the surface and to offer solutions for working through problems and different working styles to get a job done. Start by hiring a professional training consultant group to come in and discuss managing multiple generations in the workplace with your office, store, factory, warehouse or even school. The experts will provide you with a step-by-step plan to encourage company-wide harmony and increase productivity via a leadership training workshop. The process starts by breaking down barriers between generations and playing to each person’s strengths and continues with corporate team building exercises.

Get Stereotypes Out Into the Open

A good working relationship starts by examining the way each person views the others on the team. Without naming individuals, encourage your team to list adjectives they think describe several age groups, including Millennials, Generation X and Baby Boomers. Allow people to shout out adjectives about their own generations as well. Organize the adjectives into positive and negative thoughts. For example, "hard-working" is a positive, while "entitled" is a negative.

Group Multiple Generations Together

Break the larger group into smaller groups with at least one person from every generation on a team. Have them go over the stereotype list and debate the truth of each positive or negative, giving examples of times they or their similarly-aged colleagues performed in a way to prove the positive or to disprove the negative. For example, a Baby Boomer might explain that she’s often worked overtime to be "hard-working" and a Millennial might say that he actually worked his way through college and is still in student loan debt to disprove "entitled." The point of this exercise is not to argue but to see another point of view. Request that no one interrupt or disagree with another employee while she’s sharing.

Turn Positives Into Strengths

Once each group has gone through the list of stereotypes, come up with a hypothetical group project (or even bring up a real one if the group has a project to do) and assign roles to the different members based on the positive stereotypes of their generation. For example, if the group found that Generation X was personable, the Generation X member of the team could be in charge of sales. If the Millennial was the one most likely to understand the latest technology, she could be in charge of technical support or using a new software program to streamline the project.

Schedule a leadership training workshop for your business today and your company will soon benefit from the expertise necessary to break down the barriers between multiple generations at your business. Corporate team building, constructive conflict resolution and performance management are other areas that may intersect with your multiple generation workshop or may require additional sessions. The sooner you call in the experts, the sooner the working relationships at your company will improve.

About the Author: Jean Cabunco is a human resources manager for a Fortune 500 company. She relies on KEY Group Consulting for all of her business’ training session needs.

Online Article Marketing Specialist.