Ageless Talent

Enhancing the Performance and Well-Being of Your Age-Diverse Workforce

Lisa M. Finkelstein, Donald M. Truxillo, Franco Fraccaroli, Ruth Kanfer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000382945
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

Ageless Talent: Enhancing the Performance and Well-Being of Your Age-Diverse Workforce provides organizational leaders, managers, and supervisors with clear, evidence-based tactics by which to develop and manage an aging and age-diverse talent pool. This volume provides an easy-to-implement set of tools for addressing the difficult problems related to employee performance and well-being amid ongoing technological and social change.

Ageless Talent introduces a straightforward framework (PIERA) that translates scientific advances into actionable steps and strategies. Using this framework, this book provides practical illustrations to help readers design their own small-scale interventions to achieve desirable goals under diverse organizational constraints. Furthermore, the book addresses modern management challenges arising across the globe, and offers suggestions for leaders interested in short-term and long-term change. These suggestions, grounded in time-tested and leading-edge research evidence, include specific step-by-step guidelines, customizable to different types of organizations and industries.

With economic, cultural, technological, and demographic shifts making the changing nature of work a pressing concern for organizations around the globe, Ageless Talent is an essential text for practitioners – HR professionals, organizational leaders, and managers – as well as management education programs and professional training and leadership programs. It will also appeal to instructors and students in the field of industrial/organizational psychology.

1

Work Is Evolving, and So Are Workers

Let's Prepare for That

Imagine this scenario. You are leaving the office in the early evening to head home after a busy day. You glance into the glass-walled conference room and see a team of employees from another group gathering around as if they are setting up a meeting. You notice the wide-screen TV on the wall has a team from Singapore joining in remotely – that must explain the odd hour to begin a meeting! The group at the table looks to range from their early 20s to maybe even their 70s, and they seem to run the gamut of styles, cultures, and genders. Some appear to look a bit impatient to be starting a meeting so late in the day; they likely had to do a work-life juggling act to make this work. As a young woman, the leader of the team, seems to be calling the meeting to order, each person has a smartphone out on the table or is not-so-stealthily using them in their laps. There are some pizza boxes out on the table – looks like they might be there a while.

Most of our own workplaces contain at least some elements from this scene. Our work-nonwork lines have blurred. Technology infuses most of what we do and seems to change as soon as we become used to it. Our team members may be located all over the world, and even those across the table from us may not only look different from us on multiple levels but also see the world, and our work challenges, through a very different life-experience lens.

These are important observations about the world of work, but they aren’t exactly earth-shattering news to most of us. People have been talking and writing about this stuff for a long time. So what's different about our approach in this book?

We believe there are a lot of complex and dynamic changes happening to work on a worldwide scale. Many of these demographic, technological, cultural, and even economic shifts work in sync to affect workers in new ways¹ – and how any particular worker responds to this tide of change depends largely on their life stage and the particular, unique experiences that brought them to where they are today. And where they are today is not where they will be next year or maybe even next quarter. Workers are ever evolving – just like work.

Generational Rough Cuts: Inadequate and Misleading

We’re guessing that when you hear about “today's workers”, what you are typically hearing about is the influx of Millennials, or perhaps even the newer workers, often called Gen Z. These younger generations are sometimes discussed as if they have landed on earth from another planet and have an entirely different set of needs, motivations, and working styles. If your organization is going to keep up, they say, you need to get in the heads of these Millennial workers. Furthermore, “these workers” are discussed as if they were all the same person and that there was no variability among them. People born after 1980 are talked about with such sweeping generalizations as if they don’t differ in terms of background, experience, personality, and skills.

This is definitely not the approach that we take in this book. This generational approach to understanding changing work and workers assumes arbitrary cut points to determine generational groups. It tends to make vast oversimplifications about all members of these groups, lumping all people born within this time period together. What's more, it tends to feed into an “us-versus-them” mentality and foster stereotyping. This type of approach begets a sort of “Millennials are from Mars, Gen Xers are from Jupiter” approach that is unlikely to be very helpful to anyone, including those managing them.²

Perhaps it would be nice to be able to rely on what we learn in the media about Millennials’ strengths, weaknesses, and challenges – we would have a preview of what all our new employees are like, and we wouldn’t have to worry about it until the next arbitrary generation cutoff date. But, alas, it isn’t quite that simple. You wouldn’t make assumptions (we hope!) about the needs, preferences, values, and skills of all women, all men, or all people from a certain ethnic group. Why do it for the hundreds of millions of people worldwide that are tagged with these generational labels (or for any other generation, for that matter)? Although there are certainly influences that impact people who are the same age at the same historical time period on average differently than those of a different age at that time period, making assumptions about your new direct report based solely on their generational group can lead to a host of misunderstandings and even missed opportunities.³,⁴ Sometimes it's hard to convince people of this because they think they “see with their own two eyes” the differences among their team members belonging to different generations.

This book will help show that there is a lot more going on, however, than simply a person's generational status. It is rare to see a book for managers that addresses the variety of ways workers can change, mature, and evolve over the course of their work lives and depending on their life circumstances. In this book, we borrow from the latest research in work and organizational psychology, gerontology, HRM sciences, and sociology to present some practical ways to understand your evolving workers – regardless of their age. It will provide you with some tools to better manage all your employees – from different age groups, and over time as they change and develop.

The Dynamic and Shifting Workscape

It is impossible to talk about how workers change over the lifespan without considering the changing nature of workplaces, workspaces, and job demands. These things affect everyone regardless of age or life stage, or course, but they may not affect us all in the same way.

What's more, all these changes may interact in many ways. For example, we will talk about some cultural issues – work practices aren’t the same everywhere, and aging workers are seen and treated differently by different cultures (see our Special Focus Box 1.1 for more on this). This was always the case, but now that technology has us more readily interacting in teams across cultures, the impact of these differences can affect us all. Let's take a closer look at what's happening in today's workscape, and why it matters for the aging workforce.

Special Focus Box 1.1: An International Perspective

Your authors include two Americans living in the United States, an expat American living in Ireland, and a native Italian living in his homeland. We recognize that there are different laws and policies in different countries regarding things like age discrimination and retirement age, and these can shape the culture around age and work in that country. Here we provide just a few examples for you and some resources for you to find out information about how these laws may impact your strategies for managing age at work. These examples come from a fuller and more detailed list at agediscrimination.info/international.

Country	Laws
The USA	The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) of 1967 makes it unlawful for an employer to discriminate (in terms of hiring, compensation, firing, terms and conditions of employment, etc.) against workers over 40 years of age.
Canada	Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedom (1982; Section 15-1) bans age discrimination along with other forms of discrimination. The different provinces have slight variations on who is covered; Alberta, Ontario, and Saskatchewan ban it toward those over age 9, British Columbia over age 18, while others do not specify.
Italy	Article 15 of the Workers’ Statute (1970) prohibits age discrimination (no age specified) in hiring dismissal, discipline, or other damages. The EU Framework Directive no. 78/2000 (2002) further protects from indirect forms of discrimination, such as harassment.
Ireland	The Employment Equality Acts (EEA) of 1998 to 2015 prohibit discrimination in employment in terms of access, conditions of employment, training opportunities, promotion, etc. for employees of any age above the maximum age that they must attend school (currently 16).
New Zealand	The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (1990) includes protection from age discrimination. Complaints can be filed under the Human Rights Commission or Employee Relations Authority; remedies are meant to be compensatory and not punitive or criminal.
Singapore	The Retirement and Re-employment Act (Chp 274A) or Singapore protects employees from dismissal based on age prior to mandatory retirement age of 62 or what is specified contractually (whatever is higher).
Israel	Age discrimination is prohibited under the Employment Equal Opportunities Law. The law was enacted in 1988 but didn’t cover age until 1995. There is no specified age to make a claim.
Kenya	The Constitution of Kenya (2010) prohibits discrimination from the State on the basis of age, among other things. The Employment Act of 2007 (5-2 and 5-3) prohibits employment discrimination. It does not mention age expressly, but has been used in conjunction with the Constitution to make age discrimination claims.

Additional Resources on Employment Law

Murphy, K. R. (2018). The legal context of the management of human resources. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 5, 157–182.

Myors, B., et al. (2008). International perspectives on the legal environment for selection. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 1, 206–246.

Ryan, A. M., & Tippins, N. (2009). Designing and implementing global selection systems. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

For instance, consider demographic shifts around the world. The decline in birthrate and increase in life expectancy are catching up with society. To illustrate, right now in the European Union, there are four working people for every retired person.⁵ If the retirement norms and immigration trends do not change, how many will that be in 2060? Only two working people for every retired person! The potential economic ramifications of these trends are staggering. Although the projected change in the United States is not so dramatic, the pattern is similar. For countries to be able to support their older population, it will be imperative for people to work longer. But for people to do that, we must do what we can do to ensure good health and sustained motivation and productivity. Creative and flexible policies are needed.

There are other economic, technological, and cultural changes and challenges that accompany this demographic shift as well. For example, changes to the public welfare systems in many countries will necessitate longer careers, and this may result in fewer opportunities for younger workers to find stable employment with growth potential.

Age will continue to have a significant impact on key jobs. Certain fields are experiencing growth and others contraction. Skill sets among workers from different age groups do not match these changing dynamics. For instance, the medical field is growing and in need of skilled and highly educated workers to handle the huge increases in the older population and its associated health issues.⁶ It likely comes as no surprise that the tech industry is growing rapidly as well. The flipside, however, is that certain industries are dying out. Older workers in fields that are no longer thriving find themselves laid off and face difficulties getting re-employed. If not faced with unemployment, many will be overqualified for the work they are able to secure (and perhaps underpaid). Increasingly, they will be working for and with people many years their junior. Interestingly, it may not be only because technological advancements make workers in some industries passé; some type of work may be less in demand because of the technological changes in our nonwork life. When's the last time you paid a visit to your local watch repair or camera repair store?⁷

Within almost all jobs, even the more traditional ones, technological changes have implications for training needs. Managers and workers must accept lifelong learning at the “new normal” to stay productive and successful. And not only is technology often the trigger for training, it may also be present in the mode of training as well. Computer-based training can be cost-effective and practical, but may instigate fear and hesitation in those not as familiar with new technology.⁸ Many older people are keenly adept at using new technology, but on average the skill level is likely to be higher among younger folks who have been using technology since they were in diapers.

Technology has also afforded us the “luxury” of being able to work from remote locations in many types of jobs; that luxury, however, can also be a curse when it is accompanied by the expectation that if someone can work everywhere, they should always be working!⁹ This type of telepressure may impact workers differently at different stages of their life course, depending on their nonwork demands and preferences, but for many it can lead to technostress.

On a similar note, technological changes allow us to now more easily collaborate with people all over the world. This has led to an increase in virtual teams. These types of teams have communication obstacles regardless of the demographic composition of the team, but may have an added challenge if tea...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Work Is Evolving, and So Are Workers: Let’s Prepare for That
• 2 The PIERA Approach and How to Use It
• 3 Motivation and Engagement Across the Working Lifetime
• 4 Training and Learning as Workers Evolve in a Technology-Driven World
• 5 Adjusting to Changes in Workers’ Physical and Other Abilities over Time
• 6 Effective Teamwork and Relationships in Diverse Teams as Workers Evolve
• 7 Enhancing Work-Nonwork Balance and Well-Being of Evolving Workers
• 8 Managing and Supporting Employee Talent for Success and Satisfaction Across the Lifespan
• 9 Keeping up the Good Work: Self-Managed Coaching with PIERA
• Index