Gen Z, Ageism, & Tenured Employees | Power Theory 012

Someone they know is 65 years old and was told outright that she didn't get a promotion because she only works 32 hours a week. I think that there's probably a tendency that we're not engaging people. We're kind of putting them aside at some point in their career. We're not necessarily nurturing and developing the same way that we would with younger workers. Hi, this is Russ Willette. I'm an executive coach. I teach people leadership, personal agency, and power, and how to be successful in their careers. I recently wrote a blog about how to promote and take care of your high potential employees. And after it was published, I immediately got several emails that I should address the subject of ageism. I should address the subject of really nurturing and taking care of your older workers. So today I want to talk about that directly. I want to talk about how to engage long term employees, not necessarily older employees, but long term employees, because the premise is, I mean, we have these stories I hear from older workers or from long term employees, say all the time, well, you know, I just got laid off because I make too much or they just replaced me with a younger worker. And the sense is that they did that directly because of age. And it might be true. I don't necessarily know it's not true. When I go and look at research about long term employees or older workers, a lot of the stuff that comes back is pretty negative. It comes back and says things like, you know, they have a difficult time changing. They guard their time too closely. And to me, it sounds a lot like a lot of bias. It sounds like, it sounds to me like there's a lot of bias. I know plenty of workers that are in their seventies that still engage. I recently went to a party with several of older friends that I have, and they were in their late sixties and seventies, and they're valuable to their companies and they have no intention of retiring. I also think that this whole concept of retirement has shifted and changed in the last 50 years. I think people obviously healthier, longer, and they want to stay more engaged for a longer period of time. And this whole premise of working till you're 60, get the gold watch, go and retire on a beach somewhere is just kind of, it's good for some people, but it's really not, it's not practical for many people. And a lot of people want to work and share their value. I would almost say that diversity inclusion is extremely important, and we hear a lot about it, but I rarely hear anything about age. I don't hear a lot about that. And, you know, we have people that run for senior offices that happen to be in their seventies, maybe even eighties. And the first criticism is, you know, they're too old, they can't do the job. And I think that's a bias. That's just not necessarily true. It might be true for some people, but it's not true for others. Just like we'd say that Gen Z don't necessarily want to work hard. I mean, these are biases, too. We have to kind of get rid of all of them. We have to judge people for who they are and what contribution they make and not subscribe to these biases. Let me just talk about this first thing about older workers or more wise workers or whatever we want to call them, long term employees wanting to guard their time well. Well, how different is that from a 30 year old today? Millennials want to guard their time well, too. There's a lot of discussion about work life balance and about managing time, and it's not unusual for a lot of companies to have a 32 hours workweek. So one of the people that I know that responded told me a story about how someone they know is 65 years old and was told outright that she didn't get a promotion because she only works 32 hours a week. And I just think that's absolutely the wrong way to look at it. It doesn't matter the time people spend as long as they're providing value. Now, if they said that, if they had said to her, we need you to work 60 hours a week, no one's going to take that job. And if they had said to her, well, you don't have these domain skills, maybe she could accept it a little bit better. But to just say you're not working enough time, you say that to a millennial, they're not going to be happy about it either, necessarily. So I think we have to change that. And also our workplace has changed. It's pretty acceptable. And we know we're moving in that direction. Well, we're not. You know, the 60 hours workweek is going to eventually go away. We have to be more efficient with our time and with people's time, and we have to work smarter and more strategic and not just do things for the sake of doing things. And the productivity tools we have at work help that. So I think we have to kind of reframe that. And I think where we're going is a place where none of that time factor will matter. What I want personally, for every client I have, no matter what their responsibility is, is that they need to be healthy and whole. And the only way they're going to do that is they spend enough time by themselves and they have personal time, and they have a balanced life, and they stay healthy, and they do the things they need to do. And they can't do that working 60, 70 hours a week. Right. And also, the work time is relative. You could work 32 hours a week, but spend another 20 hours that week reading materials and reviewing stuff on your own time and doing things in your own space. It doesn't have to be in the workplace. The other thing we hear, wiser workers or long term employees are more resistant to change. I would tell you that it's pretty much a fact that we're all resistant to change. And our mindset might be different if we interpret pushback on something as resistant to change. You know, that's not. That's not right. Pushback is good. We're going to get the right answer when we have more people push back and we get to deal with these ideas. Now, certainly I would say that it is my experience that, you know, it's certainly my experience as I get older. Right. I don't want to put up with as much b's as maybe I used to. I don't necessarily nurture relationships for the sake of nurturing them. I want to spend time with people that are. That are meaningful to me and meaningful to my mission and that are, you know, that are, you know, good to work with. I'm not gonna suffer fools. I'm not gonna waste time. And I think sometimes that can be interpreted as, well, he's not as engaged as he want, as he once was. You know, take new technologies. Right. If you asked, you know, certainly there'll be a group of people that will reject new technologies. Oh, there's a new system. What a pain in the neck. And, you know, why are we gonna get involved in that? But fundamentally, everybody's gonna go through that change, and everybody's gonna go through that denial, and everybody's gonna go through that eventually. Acceptance and learning about something. It is the leader's job to take people through that change. So if you have a worker that you're dealing with that happens to be more tenured and you see them resisting change in that way, you can blame them if you want, but I argue that it's your fault for not necessarily allowing them to go through the process of change and really help them get motivated to get through that change. I don't think we should paint everything with the same brush. I think we have to be careful about that. I think that, yes, the realities of work life balance and change and, you know, effectiveness are differently problem. But when I look at those things, I wonder why that happens. Is it happening perhaps because you disregard their ideas? Is it happening because they're relying on their past experience to justify their value? In other words, what they did ten years ago was important, but so they keep bringing that up because we're not engaging them in the new, the new important thing. I think that there's probably a tendency that we're not engaging people. We're kind of putting them aside at some point in their career, and we're kind of, we're not necessarily nurturing and developing the same way that we would with younger workers. And I think we have to pay attention to that. Bill Maher did an episode where he talked about Biden running for president again, and the argument is that he's too old to run. And the fact is that as long as Bill Maher says, as long as the wiring is working, there's immense value in that. What value does somebody with a lot of experience and tenure have in the organization? Well, they have the knowledge base of the company. They have a certain lack of tolerance for putting up with, you know, not necessarily the most productive ideas, and, or they don't want to waste their time. They bring wisdom and measure to what they decide to do. I don't see how any of these things can be bad. Long term members of your organization seem to become complacent, and I say that it's your fault. And regardless of their age, it's your fault that they've become complacent. I think you want to make sure good employees have variety. So if you have someone that's worked in finance for the last 20 years. Right. You could almost argue, why haven't they gone outside finance? Why have they not explored other areas? They might kind of stagnate in finance. Right. You can take them out. You can engage them in special projects. You can encourage them to do things that the other workers do and get them more exposure. So I think the sociology of the company has to change. Not only do we have to forget our own biases, I think our employees need to understand that we don't accept those biases. If I think there's a tendency for, there's a tendency for older people to kind of, you know, say things about younger people that I feel are too general and they shouldn't be doing it. Like, we shouldn't say that, you know, they don't want to work hard and they need a lot of feedback. Yes, I think all those things are important. I think people want to. I think all people want feedback. So I think that we generalize there. And I think also younger people can generalize, or there can be a stigma that's attached to someone that has been branded as maybe past their prime or, you know, just wants to work 32 hours a week or whatever that is. We cannot stand for that, just like we couldn't stand for any other diversity challenges. We need to make sure that people. That if companies are embracing all workers of any age, we can create a culture where all that is valuable. There used to be a time when, you know, throughout history, it was always the older person, the wiser person, or the person that was of value, and there was immense amount of respect for our elders. They held a special place in our society. It's the same thing at work now. That might not look exactly like a younger workers domain or you younger workers experience, but it's there that needs to be tapped. I think you have to create valuable programs that promote the belief that older people, more tenured people, people with long time in the company, have immense amount of value that we have to tap into that might stop older workers from kind of always relying on their past experience to promote their brand. Right. You know, we don't want to hear things like, well, back in the day, we did it this way, or, you know, when we did this before, this is how we did that. All that, you know? So I question that. I can see where that can be annoying. I also see where that can be valuable. But if it's annoying, I also question, why is that person saying that? Because that person doesn't necessarily feel that they're being appreciated or that their values even, you know, we need to move them beyond that. We need to move us all beyond that. Yes. This is how we did it in the past. What are we going to look like in the future? Let's get their future ideas and let's get them engaged so that this doesn't become a challenge. Right. So how do you engage an older worker at work? Well, first of all, I would say stop the rule about hours. You know, it doesn't matter how many hours. If a wiser, more mature employee wants to give our company 20 hours, allow them to do that. Figure out a way to do that. Maybe it's a contract. Maybe it's a shared work situation where they share the work with somebody else, or maybe it's just that they work 20 hours from home and 20 hours in the office. I mean, let's. Let's not make that an obstacle. We haven't made that. We're learning how to not make that an obstacle. I think we have to be flexible about that. Make sure that more mature workers are continuously learning as well. Right. Don't just send, you know, don't just send the high potentials to these trainings. Send also the people that are going to sit next to them and provide value in those high potentials experience. In other words, send the mentor and the mentee to these programs. You know, when we run programs, you know, I want to have a mixture of people. I want to have the younger people, the people that are coming up, the high potentials, and I want to have the mid level managers and I want to have the senior executives all in the same room. Why? Because that diversity is just a beautiful thing. And I've never had a vice president come to me after a training. It's the same training that I just did with their directors and supervisors. I've never had a senior say to me, well, that was the waste of time, of my time. They say, no, that was great, because they're remembering and they're polishing and they're still learning. Right. We want everybody to learn these skills. Right? Feel a sense of community. Feel a shared language in what we're trying to do as a company. Get them all involved in whatever they're doing. Do not disregard someone because, you know, they've already got it. We don't need to worry about them. Allow, you know, if you don't have a mentoring program, you know, we can. You can formalize it, but you can also keep it very informal. I would really make sure that the more mature, wiser workers are actually spending time with the younger workers and really kind of integrating them both socially and so that they can accept each other and remove those biases. Learn from each other because a wiser, older worker is going to learn just as much from a younger worker. Back, you know, back in the nineties, there was this, you know, there wasn't an uncommon thing when technology was just taking over that somebody from it, like the help desk person in it, would go to the vice president or the president's office and spend time and reverse mentor them on technology. That was awesome, right? That was great. We should be doing the same thing. We should. We should reintegrate in these people again, not just to get rid of their biases, but also to make sure that they're learning from each other about the certain critical skills of the company, it doesn't send a message, a good message to the younger workers, the people that you want to stay at the company for a long time, that you disregard older workers, you know, after a certain period of time, you want to make sure that they're integrated. Yeah. So in addition to integration, we want. You want to also create. The biggest thing you can do for your organization is create a culture that embraces innovation, change, and include the voices of dissent in that innovation and think about how we're going to move people through change so that you eliminate this whole concept of more mature people. Resist change. They won't resist change if they understand it. They just have more questions and then we'll just blindly follow along, you know, how do you motivate people to, you know, first of all, how you motivate older workers to really contribute to organization, first of all, is not to just disregard them. That's most important. And don't make up silly excuses about their time commitment, or they resist change, or these are real things, but try to put that in context. Understand their concerns really deeply. Try to understand where are they coming from. Right. What is it they want. Now if someone doesn't want to provide that kind of value, that's fine. That's great. Now you have a great dialogue about what to do, but if they really are craving to provide some value and it's just not fitting right for you or for your organization, figure, figure that out. Work with them on that and try to negotiate what it is that they are going to contribute to, what they're going to do, but understand their concerns. Do not do disregard them. Clarify the benefits to change if. If so. If so needed. But again, I don't think you should just be doing it for one group of people. You should be doing it for everybody. What is the change and why are we doing it? Why are we moving through change? Involve them in the process. Make sure they're involved in key decisions. Don't disregard them. Respect their, you know, just like we want to include everybody else. You know, diversity is important. Diversity creates psychological safety. Diversity allows, you know, allows people to flourish no matter where they are in society or whatever the situation is. We want to involve everybody in that process. Make them feel included and valued. You should be championing the wise person's past experience. You should be championing where they've come from. From. You should be, you know, validating their experience of what they've done so far and what they do, and also move them to whatever's next. Provide them balance, just like you want to. So basically, what I'm saying is we want to do with the wise employee everything we would do with the new employee. Right. We want to remove bias. We want to understand concerns. We want to mentor and coach them. We want to make sure that we're listening and paying attention to them. We want to involve them in the process. We want to make them feel valued. We want them to know where they're going to go. And that does not mean you don't correct them when they go back. We want to correct people and give them great feedback when they need it. And we want to treat them all with respect. You know, the punchline is that as long as you treated all employees the same, people should feel this and the biases should melt away. If you like this video, click below.See all