Most workplaces today have multiple generations working side-by-side. The diversification at workplaces is so prevalent that even up to five generations working together under one roof is not an uncommon thing. While most would agree that diversification is a good thing in itself it does challenges employers to meet a vast number of expectations. One of those expectations is making hiring easier. It can be done with Recruiteze. Recruiteze is the best free online ATS for small business recruiting and hiring. Want a free trial? Click here!
Engaging Different Generations At Work
The different needs of different generations are bound to make things more complicated, especially with millennials becoming the dominating face of workforces. It is, however, going to surprise you that the factors driving employee engagement and job satisfaction don’t really vary across generational groups. In fact, all groups are driven by workplaces that are well-run, administered efficiently, and demonstrate higher levels of care and concern for their employees. Each one of them is on the lookout for a common thing, access to the latest technology and resources along with the flexibility to make their own decisions at work. And, this is something that is not going to change from one generation to the next. These were the startling findings of Molly Delaney, a consultant with Hay Group’s Global Insight, who expected to find disparities between different generational workforces while analyzing the study of a group of multigenerational employees. The research was being conducted for the identification of factors that actually motivate and engage people of different age groups to perform better at their workplace.
What you must know is that the workforces, irrespective of their generation, demand workplace diversification. You are, therefore, left with no option other than to diversify your organization. With that arises the need for an introduction of full-time and part-time job positions that offer greater flexibility and diversification in roles being offered. The diverse workforce requirements, along with the growing competition, have led to greater emphasis on culture and work environment. More businesses are now looking at engaging employees and even understand the cost of a disengaged workforce. As per the Global Human Capital Trends 2016 report published by Deloitte University Press, employee engagement has become a major issue throughout businesses and HR world. Having said that, there is an immediate need to address engagement challenges. Otherwise, disengaged employees are not going to go the extra mile for their client satisfaction. The seriousness of the matter at hand can be analyzed by the fact that employee disengagement costs the US around $500 billion annually as suggested by Gallup reports.
As the given problem is too big a problem to be ignored, the objective of writing this post is to highlight some very effective points that can help engage multigenerational workforce:
1. The Use of Smart Technology
In order to create a workplace environment that encourages employees to make an active contribution to organizational activities, the use of smart human capital management (HCM) technology is recommended. You need to make efforts in a direction that makes your employees feel valued and an integral part of your organization regardless of their generation or job role.
The use of effective HCM technology can help you make a significant difference in the areas given below. Also consider using a free online ATS for small business recruiting and hiring. Recruiteze is number one in the market place. Keep reading to learn why.
a. Effective Hiring Processes
It goes without saying that by recruiting employees that are not an ideal fit for your organization, the employee disengagement levels at your workplace are going to shoot up and the productivity of your business is going to be affected drastically. But by using latest technology and offering the right experience to users, you can make an effort towards getting the engagement levels off on the right foot.
Job seekers today are largely interested in making recruitment applications from their smartphones. Thus, if your hiring processes are not optimized for mobile devices, you’re going to lose a majority of talented candidates. This is a significant gap that should be taken care of immediately. By improving the user experience involved in your hiring process, you tend to ensure that you don’t lose out on good candidates.
Furthermore, the use of tools that are used for the initial screening of candidates should be such that only the ideal candidates get shortlisted leading to optimal utilization of time and resources. The automation of workflow should also be considered seriously as it can help enhance the efficiency of employees involved in the given task and, as a result, overall productivity gets enhanced significantly.
b. Managing Employee Performance
One of the practices that lead to enhancement in employee engagement is performance management. Performance management is critical because of the reasons listed below:
- When employees are provided continuous feedback about their performance, they understand if they’re doing well and what all is there that can be done to align their goals with the organizational goals. The result is more productivity and better employee performance.
- When you conduct regular performance management of your employees, they tend to stay with your organization for a longer time.
This approach of managing employee performance delivers better results than traditional approach that focuses on conducting annual reviews. The use of HCM technology provides managers with various tools that make it possible for them to offer continuous feedback to employees on their performance and activities. Thus, it helps in promoting performance development and encourages employees to stay on top of their performance graph. The result is the creation of highly engaged and productive workforce.
c. Flexible Scheduling
Every employee, nowadays, seeks access to flexible scheduling tools so as to be able to efficiently manage their work schedule. By offering flexibility at your workplace, you’ll find a significant change in the performance of your employees, their levels of engagement levels and even their retention periods. By deploying HCM technology, you find yourself in a position where it gets easier for you to engage employees and encourage them to contribute to the decision making processes that are followed within your organization. Different tools such as shift swapping that are offered by this technology allow employees to enjoy greater flexibility and also relieve managers from the burden of filling open shifts at the last minute.
The findings of the recent study conducted by Aptitude Research Partners reveal the significance of flexible scheduling tools. It reveals that organizations offering shift-swapping capabilities are 55 percent more likely to indicate higher engagement levels. Furthermore, they are 53 percent more likely to indicate below average turnover rates for the industry to which they belong.
2. The Need to Focus on Processes
You might agree that it is not uncommon for even the best technology to fail miserably in yielding effective results if the processes behind it are ignored. The investments made in the technology sector go hand-in-hand with the processes that are followed by an organization. It is, therefore, not only about focusing energy and resources on improving the technology. The efforts have to be made at the same scale for improving the processes in order to make the implementation of technology a success.
The following considerations must be made by organizations that are looking at implementing HCM technology:
- The use of existing workflow needs to be analyzed along with identifying the need for new processes or improvement in the existing processes.
- A decision will have to be made on whether unified strategies need to be implemented for the entire organization or what works best for each functional area. While the former will require analysis of workforce data in general, the latter would require in-depth analysis and expertise in order to make the best of out of the investments being made.
3. Superior Workforce Experience
Like you would go an extra mile to offer your customers a superior experience that they will find hard to forget, you will have to thrive on offering a similar experience to your employees in order to attract, engage and retain them. Everything you do right from conducting interviews to offering them training, you need to look for ways that can make things easier, transparent and professionally rewarding for them. Even if new things have to be introduced, it should be done considering all the employees irrespective of their age group. It is the experience you offer them that is going to guarantee their satisfaction levels with your organization. This might require the formulation of different strategies for different generations or it could be that a single strategy might just be effective for all the generations.
This calls for detailed analysis of the needs of all the employees. Along with this, solutions will have to be offered to address the challenges faced by each one of them.
Final words:
In today’s time of great demographic change, the engagement of all the generations is critically important. This might require an effective strategy in order to face intergenerational workforce challenges and address generation-specific needs of your workforce in case there are any. What is more important than anything else is that all the employees, irrespective of their age and gender, fit into your organizational culture, have maximum engagement levels and deliver their best performance.
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Embracing the Multi-Generational Workforce – Part 1
How to Recruit A Multi-Generational Workforce