Talking ‘bout My Generation*

The value of sharing ideas between generations is being recognized, and lamented. According to The Harvard Business Review, a huge wave of older employees retired during the pandemic and this has created a serious loss of “institutional memory, expertise, and loyalty.”*** There is no big population bubble to replace them. Subsequent generations are smaller. There is a labour shortage.* Older workers are needed to fill the shortage and for other important reasons.

The Boomers Took Valuable Experience With Them

Companies and institutions are losing their history: the memories of the positive and negative. Mature workers remembered how things were done back in the day. If ideas were tried and then abandoned for various reasons, the retired workers are not there to remind everyone and so, the same mistakes are repeated years later. It’s a waste of time and effort that could be avoided. 

Loss Of Precious Traditions

At school, as the more experienced teachers retired, we lost part of our school’s unique culture. No one knew there were school colours, a motto, a school song or how to sing it. No one remembered that students used to be ambassadors for new families and welcome them with tours of the school. None of the staff recalled the teacher traditions that made staff meetings fun, friendly and moments of community. These parts of our school made working there and going to school there, worthwhile because they helped us feel valued and gave us a sense of belonging. With the large number of teacher retirements in recent years, this was lost.

Younger Generations Need To Collaborate With Older

The lack of communication between the generations creates problems with products and services.  When the workers are younger they struggle to create products or services for someone who is much older than them. They have to create with older adults for it to be successful. 

Improvements For Older Adults Equals Improvements For All

Creating a ramp in a parking lot to make an elevator accessible, is only effective if you’ve asked the people who use the ramp if it works for them. Recently, I was with a person who uses a walker and the ramp was too steep for her to use without my assistance. If the person creating the ramp consulted with the people who needed it, that would never have happened. Instead of checking a box that a ramp was built, they would have a ramp that could achieve the purpose of allowing people easy access to the elevators. A ramp that works for an older person, benefits a person of any age with mobility challenges (people with strollers, wheelchairs, walkers). 

When individuals who entered the workforce before email can collaborate smoothly with those who were raised on memes and selfies, your business can bring more widely appealing products to market, craft compelling marketing campaigns to touch millions, and win love for your brand across the generational spectrum.”***

 Andrey Khusid, Miro’s founder and CEO

Generational Collaboration Benefits Us All

When generations work together, it improves products and services for everyone. As ecomonmist, Armine Yalnizyan states, “Population aging can be our friend, not our enemy. But we have to treat it as something more than just a labour shortage for business. We have to treat it as an opportunity to make every job a good job.”**

---

*https://genius.com/The-who-my-generation-lyrics

**https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-workers-covid-retirements-1.6529325

***https://hbr.org/2023/01/bridging-generational-divides-in-your-workplace

---