VANNOY:

How to lead a multi-generational team, age diversity in the workplace. Hi, my name is Mike Kno, vice President of Marketing at Asure. And, and this is a really important topic. I I, I, I think the whole topic of d e I diversity, equity, inclusion I, I think sometimes the conversations tend to skew more towards race in, in gender and there’s a whole political landscape around these topics today. But I think one of the most important topics that everybody has to address is, is age diversity, right? Something like 35% of our workforce today are millennials and it’s a smaller number of Gen Z, but by 2025, I think it’s about 25% of the workforce is gonna be Gen Z. And in old guys like me can’t just say, oh, the younger generation doesn’t get it. That’s gonna be the workforce, right?

So, so either we don’t get it, or, or our businesses won’t succeed. So I have, have a, a fantastic guest today to really unpack this topic. Her, her name is Dr. Eliza Filby. She’s a writer, speaker consultant who specializes in generational intelligence, helping companies, governments, and services understand generational shifts within politics, society, and the workplace. Eliza received her PhD from the University of Warwick and subsequently taught at Kings College London and the University of Renmin in China. Her writing has been published in the Times Guardian and Financial Times. This year, she was awarded Europa Forum’s 2022 Millennial Leaders Award. Eliza is the author of Fueling Gender Diversity, unlocking the Next Generation Workplace, and Mind the Gap, managing a multi-generational workforce in a post pandemic age. And she hosts her own podcast. It’s called, it’s All Relative on the Gender Gap. So can’t ask for better credentials than that. Welcome to the show, Eliza

FILBY:

<Laugh>. Well, what an exhausted bio, Mike. It’s great, great to be on your podcast. What a real pleasure. And thank you for inviting me.

VANNOY:

Well, thanks so much. So, I, I, I, if I can, and I, I, I, I, I, I think we, both of us come from our careers from, from different points of view, right? So when I think of, when I think of age diversity, I remember, you know, working for big companies and sitting in seminars, you know, going back, you know, 15, 20 years ago where, you know, the boomers and the gen X and the millennials, these were almost kinda like new concepts, but they were, they were kinda like big company concepts, like, I mean, we, we’ve all heard the term, a war for talent. Well, that was coined by a, a guy from McKenzie back in 1997. Th these were kind of big company concepts, right? And you throw in right? A a a.com bubble. You throw in a a, a war, you throw in some crazy presidential and geopolitical politics and election cycles, <laugh> a recession or two in a pandemic.

And I think so many times we blame those things as the reasons for labor shortages or labor challenges. But here we are, post pandemic with a, a, I think the latest number in the US is 3.7% unemployment. The reality is this labor shortage has been highly predictable for 30 years, right? Based on an aging workforce and birth rates and productivity per headcount for GDP by country. We, we’ve seen this coming, and this is kind of here to stay mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, and this is no longer a big company problem. This is a main street problem, small and mid-sized companies. If you want to have a workforce, you’re gonna have to compete to hire people and attract people. And that means all people, all sizes, all shapes, all ages, all all colors, all backgrounds. So that’s kinda the context of why I think this is so critical. Share, share, share your thoughts. Un unpack for if you’ll, why this is so important.

FILBY:

Well, Mike, I think you’ve alluded to a really important aspect there, which is obviously there’s a demographic crisis, right? In a sense that we are all living in an aging society unless you’re in, in Africa. And, and there are problems for business with those changing demographics, predominantly is we’re gonna have to integrate older workers into the workforce that much more. But then there’s a, a big story here, which is age diversity and the expansion of a multi-generational workforce, right? So you now have in most organizations, big, small, medium businesses, four generations in the workplace, and that’s your baby boomers who are still clinging onto power. There’s, there’s your Gen Xs who are mostly your C-suite and have reached finally in a kind of Prince Charles like way, assume the throne having really been waiting around a long time after the boomers have holding. So, and then you’ve got your millennials and Gen Zs.

And so you have four generations in the workplace, all with different ways of communicating expectations of what work is. And it’s placing people’s lives or different ideas about what work is, what leadership and management looks like, and hell, where you should do work, how you should do work. So you have generational tension in businesses. Now that is only gonna get bigger because we may have four generations in the workplace now, we are very soon gonna have, if we, you know, do not have already five generations in the workplace, right? Right. So the generational gap is real and is not going away. And in a weird kind way, we talk about gender diversity, we talk about ethnic diversity being key, not just to progressive businesses, but to successful businesses will help. Age diversity is the same thing, because what you need in every business is yes, you need that entrepreneurial, innovative spirit of youth, but you also need that experience that comes with age.

And actually, I think what’s, we may talk about generational differences within politics right now, which feels more profound than I think at any time in history. I agree. Politics used to be divided by politics, used to be divided by class. It’s now divided by age as much as class. And we feel it in our society. We may be held, feel it in our families, this real generational gap, and we’re feeling it in our businesses. And what I’ve really sought to do the last two and a half years, helping companies in the midst of a pandemic where we all had to make the shift very quickly to remote working and now making the shift to hybrid working or remote working long term, is we’re actually encountering each other less. And that’s causing an even bigger generational gap. Now, within businesses, you really have to understand that generational diversity and appreciate who Gen Z are, who millennials are, who boomers and Gen Xers are, and how they are evolving, because no generation stands still, right?

You’re confronted with different life stages. Life, you know, takes over you age. We all age. But it’s a very striking stat to say as as was recently discovered in the survey by Microsoft, you are more likely to be friends at work with someone of a different race or gender than of a different generation. Wow. And I think companies now have a real obligation. It’s impacting their bottom line. You know, at the very least, a real obligation to bridge that generational divide because it’s costing man hours, it’s costing productivity, it’s creating a corrosive culture of ageism. And it’s really something in order to secure the best talent, both young and old, in an aging society and in a time of innovation, you need both old and young. So age diversity is, should be a key business aim.

VANNOY:

Eliza, I really wanna dive into what are some of the challenges between the generations? And then, you know, what, what practical advice you’d have for the audience. Most of our, most of our listeners and watchers of this show are in small and mid-size companies. They’re, they’re employers. So this is a really, a really central issue to them. But I, I think so much of them messaging, I, I think your background, I kinda shared, mine came out of a kind of big company. I was used to going to conferences where this, these things were, were, were topics. But, but if you’re, if you’re the small business owner, you’re a retailer, you have two and 18 employees, you’re working 15 hours a day trying to grow your business, and you’re an expert in whatever line of products you carry, you’re not, you’re not an expert in this sort of thing. You just kind of feel the impact. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, right? The, the, the, the symptoms of it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But let’s start maybe with some definitions. Can, can you, so, so you talked about the four, four buckets. Boomers, gen X, millennials, gen Z, you know, give, give us the, the date ranges here. What, what, what makes these groups unique from each other,

FILBY:

Right? And, and, and remember, these, these are, these are arbitrary, but actually really important distinctions that a starting point for understanding your workforce, not an end point, right? We’re not seeking to advocate. You go around your workforce and go, oh my God, you’re such a boomer. Oh my God, you’re such a gen Xer. But let’s start with the classifications. So we have baby boomers born between 1945 to 1964, obviously, depending on which country you’re talking about. But in the US it’s kinda 19 64, 19 65. And that’s the demographic. Let’s not forget that were the benefactor of the economic postwar boom. They were called the baby boom. Because they are demographic phenomenon. They have yielded so much economic, political, and, and business power, because there are so many of them, right? Yeah. And, and so in many respects, they were the, the benefactors of years, the benefactors as well.

Let’s not forget of the social liberalizing reforms that happen in the seventies and eighties, and then the benefactors of the economic liberal reforms that happened in the 1980s. To the extent that in the US it’s been estimated that boomers hold about 70% of the nation’s wealth. And as we know, they are the ones that are already disrupting what retirement looks like and what old age looks like. Many are continuing to stay and remain in the workplace. Many of them are embracing digital culture to the extent that obviously, baby boomers are the fastest growing demographic on social media. Facebook is their playground, and it’s been estimated that by 2050 profiles of the deceased on Facebook will outnumber profiles of the living. Wow. But that sounds quite morbid, but it speaks to the fact, I know Zuckerberg’s about to inherit a mass digital graveyard. But the point is, it speaks to the fact that boomers are actually embracing new technology.

Okay? So this idea that they kind of are static and are still using analog devices is, is absolutely not true. You have the boomers and then you have the Gen Xers. Now, gen X are the ignored generation in many respects, in the shadow of the boomers, but they’re critical for three important reasons. They were the demographic that saw women begin to outnumber men at university. And those professional women went into the workplace and triggered the conversation that we’re still having now about work-life balance. That’s the demographic who were the first tech generation who had the Sony Walkman in their youth. Remember that was the first piece of personalized technology. And then they became the CrackBerry Blackberry adults at work. Yeah. They were the first ones to have technology in the workplace proper. And what’s interesting is you look at the data on the lockdowns is Gen X, who actually made the transition most successfully to fully remote working.

And then actually they are at the moment, the squeeze generation squeezed as they are between looking after their kids. Remember, parenting is now a 30 year financial commitment and looking after their elderly parents in many respects and incidents. It’s, so you have that demographic. Gen X who have been waiting in the wings a long time are now in the kind of C-suite and now kind of owning the businesses, making the key decisions, but at the heightened point of their caring responsibilities. And then you have millennials now, for a long time we’ve been slagging millennials off and telling them how awful they’re, and actually we have to remember, they’re no longer young. They’re hitting midlife, heading full into their forties. They are fully aware they’re no longer young, because we have, we’re now managing Gen Zs. And the crucial thing to respect, in respect to millennials is they’re the in between us.

They’re the ones that’s had a foot in the 20th century, and all the aspirations and challenges of the 20th century and in the 21st century, or the aspirations and challenges of the 21st. But they were the kids that were told, if you go to school, get to college, that guaranteed pathway into middle class professional life will be open to you. And as we know, that promise, particularly in America where it’s, it’s already becoming unraveled with, you know, college debt, forgiveness and all of that kinda stuff, right? Is that promise was found wanton, and then they’re the, the demographic that came of age with the smartphone. And what the smartphone did, of course, was create that fluidity between your work life and your play and leisure time. And of course, this is the generation, let’s not forget, that are not just divided between those that went to college and those that did not, but between those that could rely on the bank of mom and dad and the safety net of mom and dad and those that could not.

So you have, with the millennials a delayed entry into adulthood, the delaying of education, delaying of staying at home, the delaying of buying a house, all of those things which are partly response to economics, but also self fulfillment. But also they have the set, they have had a reliance almost on mom and dad. So you have this tension between a sort of millennial demographic that went to college and didn’t go to college, or could rely on mom and dad and could not. And why that’s significant for employers to understand is that you have within that demographic an inheritance economy where what you earn and what you learn in life is not as important as what you inherit. And that is a crucial difference to the boomers who did not inherit and could fulfill that American dream of working their way up and building a home, building a life, building a family, and building and saving for retirement, that has not been a promise fulfilled for, for millennials.

And then you have the demographic after them, gen Z, they are the experimentals, they are true 21st century kids. They’re the demographic who cannot remember the 20th century, right? And any references you may have, whether it be nine 11, which was a history lesson in school for them, or 2008 crisis that they saw their parents go through, but they themselves didn’t go through, is in a sense, completely distance for this generation. And why they’re critical, critically different from millennials is they are the social media kids who’ve had a smartphone in their pockets since they were 13, have had access to the world’s information Yeah. And the world’s marketplace. And I cannot stress that enough, which means they are not surprised by anything you say. And they have the capacity to make money in other ways than a salary. It has been estimated that this generation will have over 15 employers over the course of their working life and five different careers.

Now, who makes up these predictions? I’ve no idea. But the point stands that this is the generation I believe, that does not, and will not believe in a one salary as financial security. So it’s, it’s a generation that I think are at the full throes of the disruption in technology and a slight skepticism that comes with technology, a savviness and an entrepreneurial spirit that comes from having a smartphone, a political and slight skeptical vision of the world, because they’ve grown up at a time of populism, of of hypocrisy of, of you know racial protests, blm climate change, activism, you know, complete questioning of, quite rightly in some respects, the social order that prevailed for the last half of the 20th century. And you have this generation of kids who really are disrupting the workplace because they are not necessarily holding onto the values that have gone before.

And the reason they’re not is because it’s the job of every youth, every different generation to question what has gone before them. And they see millennials, and they, in that demographic, they see a generation that’s worked bloody hard and hasn’t got as much as previous generations. And they’re like, hang on a minute, that I don’t want that to be my future self. So they are questioning working culture in a different way. And I would just add one final point is that every generation is shaped by a pivotal experience in your youth, whether it was the sex and drugs and rock and roll the sixties or the conscription in the 1940s. And what you have in Gen Z is a generation who sacrificed two years, some places more of their youth in order to secure the safety of the elderly, elderly in society. And that sacrifice was real. And it has meant that they are, have been most exposed to rising loneliness, mental health issues, and also real challenges in the workplace. Many of them were not working from home. They were working from bed staring at a green dot for 12 hours a day, feeling increasingly disillusioned. So those are the four generations each with very different stories.

VANNOY:

So, so something I think about is, is as I’ve tried to read a lot on, on all kinds of D D U I topics generally speaking, I think human beings, regardless of gender, race age, we’re, we’re, we’re more alike than we are different. But we, it, it, it, it falls generally in classic bell curves, right? And so it, it there are some things that we can manage each other, both up and down and lateral in teams in the same ways. But the shape of these bell curves, you know, there’s overlap, but there’s also the very real differences. So, so, so speak to the, speak to the, what are some of the things that you think that it’s okay that this is, this is the way we’ve managed people or managed relationships or, or built successful teams forever? And, and what are the things that still do in fact, work that are more tied to humanity versus what are the things on the edges of these bell curves where we kind of collide with each other in, with, in our, in our differences that, that create the challenges?

FILBY:

That’s a great question. And I think there’s three things that every small to medium employer can do to satisfy, basically all four generations. The first thing is give your workers a voice, but enable them to listen to each other. And I think one of the things that you’re seeing with Gen Z is a generation that is just expecting to be heard. Yes, they’re heard on social media, so they wanna be heard in the office. So you have a generation that may not raise its voice politically in the workplace, but will raise its voice and expect to be heard. But what I think is really crucial, and by the way, that’s something that all generations want, that’s what human beings want, most of all, is to be listened to, particularly in hierarchical structures such as politics or the workplace. If I could raising your voice,

VANNOY:

Can, can, can I expand on that? So, so I, I, I completely agree, and I think this is one of those, the areas where employers can get tri tripped up. Everyone I think has this desire and need to be heard and listened to different generations require it mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, right? So my parents you know, bloomer mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, my mom desperately wants to be listened to, that she also bites her tongue probably more than she should in, in sits quietly. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> not being listened to and tolerates it, where my daughter sure as heck is not gonna tolerate not being listened to. Right? So I I, I think this, I I love where you went there, the difference between a, a desire in what they require. Maybe that’s one of these differences between the generations and some of these categories.

FILBY:

I, I, I mean, I agree, but to a certain extent, I would say that boomers have been heard a lot and are finding it definitely very difficult in being shouted out and sidelined by younger generations. I mean, I, you could, you could see politics political situ situations across the world where boomers have found a real difficulty in being silenced and not being heard as much as they used to. They’re the first generation, by the way, I dunno what generation your mother is, but boomers were the first generation to really raise their voice, as, you know, as a youthful movement in, in the sixties and seventies. And ever since they’ve dominated the discussion, arguably. So I think I would, I would slightly disagree with you and say, actually, you’ve got generations now. We are living in this hyper individualistic age where I would say that most, most people expect to be heard, what they’re really bad at.

And what bosses and companies need to really get behind is listening to each other. And we’ve all become very bad at listening, because our mobile phones are brilliant at telling us that we’re right and everyone agrees with us and brilliant at hiding everything that doesn’t fit with our worldview. And actually, what we really have to do is expose ourselves to things that don’t sit well with us, that jar with our values that are difficult to hear. And I think that in a way, in a work context, that’s really important as it is in a political context, I would argue. So, I would say the first thing is, is that that dialogue. The second thing I would say, and again, this is something that Gen Z I think are so adept and, and kind of knowing about, but actually again, it’s something that all generations need, and that’s learning in the workplace.

Now, that can happen in a very structured, formal way, in a big corporate, big multinational, but actually best learning in the workplace through osmosis happens, through observation, happens with people just watching other people have difficult conversations with clients or negotiating a certain deal, or, you know, watching a sales pitch or developing a certain project. It’s through watching. And one of the real problems I have with hybrid working is that so much of that learning is being lost. Now that’s not just to the benefit of young people, that is all generations. Now, if we’re working longer, we are gonna have to upskill constantly to remain agile. And one of the things that I think is quite prevalent in most businesses is that learning happens to about the age of 35, 40. And then you’re just assume to know what you’re doing. And actually, one of the things that really has to happen if we’re having, if we’re gonna manage an aging workforce, is we have to be constantly upskilling that skilling that aging demographic.

And the third thing, and I think the pandemic has really shed a light on this. And again, this is not something that Gen Zs are, are, are, you know, only talking about. I think it’s something that would serve all generations, and that is care. And I use the word care rather than wellbeing, because I think what we are seeing is, is a desire for rewriting of the social contract between employer and employee, I think mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, for a long, we saw the instability of jobs and the breakdown of that job for life, and that paternalistic responsibility that a boss had for their employees In the eighties, you saw that breakdown, you saw the breakdown of the pension schemes, you saw a much more, as a reaction, a much more agile disloyal worker evolve. And actually, what the pandemic, I think has highlighted is a need for, and a desire for companies to demonstrate their care.

Now, that can take a number of forms. That can mean financial care and support, obviously in rising inflation, cost of living potential recession times it can mean wellbeing in the sense that not what resources are you, are you providing for my mental health, but actually how are you impacting my mental health because of the email culture that you have or because of the toxic management culture that exists, or it can manifest itself in providing care or enabling me as a worker to care and perform my caring responsibilities. So whether it’s are you helping me with childcare? Are you helping me with maternity or paternity leave? Are you helping me with elder care because we’re in an aging society and we need to look after our elderly relatives? I think care is a, a kind of catchall term that goes and speaks to a desire that all generations have, which is, do I actually feel that my employers care about me and about me in the round, not care if I can perform my duties, not care if I meet some metrics, but actually know who I am, know what is going on in the background of my life, know how I can best perform these duties and demonstrates that care, not in an automated way, but in a personal human humane way that demonstrate that human connection

VANNOY:

Yeah.

FILBY:

That we all crave through our work.

VANNOY:

I, I love that. And I, and I, I think about I think about the latitude. This is trying to think of a way that doesn’t, <laugh> sounds stupid, but I think about the latitude a manager has for their man, different management styles when they, when they demonstrate how much they care, right? So if, if you can’t, if, if, if your employee doesn’t vibe on your empathy and they don’t feel like you care, you’re not, I believe you’re not gonna get as much latitude as being like, oh, I don’t like this about their style. This is wrong about their approach. They made me come to the office here. Or This is how we run meetings and this is how decisions are made. Versus, I think people will give each other a lot of grace when they know the other person deeply cares. It’s like, you know, my, my old football coach, right?

FILBY:

You know, hundred,

VANNOY:

He might, he might scream and yell at me like crazy. And I might think, dude, you’re wrong. And I don’t like being yelled at, but I know this guy would go to the mats for me. Right? And he’s only doing this because he wants us to win as a team. Right? And I, I, I I, that, that may be one of these little red threads that kind of can weave through the generations for all of us to manage as, as high potentials and the younger generations manage up and older people manage down, is simply genuinely authentic empathy and caring about the outcomes as

FILBY:

Right. And do you know, do you know what, Mike, you’ve, you’ve alluded something there that made me really think profoundly about you talking about your football coach. You know, that was such a human relationship that was based on humanity. And that was about, you know, testing your resilience. It was about getting the best outta you, that was about camaraderie and the team that was about earning respect, not expecting it to be automated. And, and already there. I think the thing that where we have gone wrong is over the last 20 to 30 years, we have sought to turn humans into robots and weirdly robots into humans, <laugh>. And actually what we need to,

VANNOY:

We’re definitely trying to do that

FILBY:

Age of automation and age, right? An age of automation and an age of AI is go, hang on a minute, where’s the humanity in work? And the humanity in work is in really being demonstrating that care, showing that that human commitment and, and diligence. And, and I think personalization in particularly management style, I would say leadership style requires probably something different. But when we’re talking about management, one of the interesting things I’ve seen with companies is the ones that have the most successful flexible working policies are not the ones that have kind of like a top heavy line. Okay, you come into the office two days a week, three days a week, or that idea of a centralized working policy is inherently inflexible, right? The best flexible working policies I’ve seen are ones that operate completely autonomously within small teams of say, no more of than 15 to 20, where they say, okay, do you know what my, I’m doing this and I’ve gotta do this, but you are gonna be in the office here, and you really stepped up for me on this moment, so I’m gonna step up for you on this, and I’m gonna, that sense of social obligation and reciprocal responsibility to you have to others to be in the room when they need you, and for them to be in the room when they, you know, need, you need them.

And I think the, the, it, again, it goes back to the humanity of work, is that that really is at the heart of it, what keeps people loyal, committed, and belonging is that, okay, do I feel a sense that I’m cared for and understood? And that’s not about HR policies, and if anything, small businesses are more equipped to do that than big ones.

VANNOY:

I dunno if I’m maybe be able articulate this. You’re, you’re striking on something for me here. It’s, it’s, and I’m, I’m thinking it’s this notion of have to versus get to the, I mean, so like the, the data’s really, really clear on the annual employee engagement studies, right? And, and there’s a barbell mm-hmm. <Affirmative> of employees who must work in an office. And so this is pre pandemic but employees who must come to the office and work five days of work versus employees who are by definition a virtual job and don’t have an office to go to, versus those employees mm-hmm. Who have a choice and they can come and go as they please. The employees full-time office and full-time home are equally disengaged. The most engaged employees are those that have the most flexibility. And as I think about it how much of this is a function of choice, right? If I, I can’t force my spouse to love me, but the fact that it is her choice is what makes it, at least I think she does. I love her. It, it, it, it,

It, it’s, it’s that freedom to fail for the, the freedom of the choice that might choose something you don’t want, but it’s, that’s what makes the relationship special as soon as there’s, you know,

FILBY:

Right when it’s a choice. I mean, actually, Mike, I mean, you’re, well, you’re eminently lovable. The thing actually, you’ve hit the nail on the head there is like, almost like the, the working arrangement was like a, an arranged marriage, right? Yeah. Is that you, there was a certain level of coercion, a certain level of coercion, and what the pandemic did, was it, I mean, people talked about flexibility. I think that’s wrong. I think it gave people a sense of autonomy, which is actually more powerful than flexibility.

VANNOY:

I agree completely.

FILBY:

And the thing that it did is it, is it gave people a, a and I think it reconfigured their relationship with time, time. They weren’t having those water cooler moments with their colleagues. They were having them with their kids. I mean, chaotic as they were, they were having them with their kids. It changed people’s relationship with their home, their health, you know their family. And I’m not saying it wasn’t difficult, and obviously experience hugely varied during the pandemic, but for a lot of people, particularly in white collar jobs, there was a recalibration of how people were spending that time and the control they had over that time. And that, unfortunately, a lot of things in history cannot be undone. And I do believe that experience of the pandemic, because it was so prolonged and intense, cannot just be undone and cannot, we cannot see a return to normal.

So anyone out there is listening, thinking, you know, a recession that’ll get people back into work, that’ll get people back into the office. I don’t think it will, I hear a lot of CEOs really across the world saying, you know, I think this will be the moment where people go back to the office. I actually don’t think it will. You’re the opposite. I think people will start going, I can’t afford to go to the office. But I think, you know, for a real, for a real time, the pandemic was a liberating moment. You know, they could rip off the corporate chains, rip off the lanyard <laugh>, and declare themselves free.

VANNOY:

Yeah. I, I think certainly the next generation behind Gen Z, but certain the, the, the definitely the younger end of, of Gen Z, they, they’re all about exercising choice. I I, I have an employee no longer an employee. He, he was awesome. He was a, he was a, a sales development rep. He got promoted into a sales job. He was doing great, and he saved every penny he made for the two years he worked for us so that he could travel around the country. He quit his job and he’s traveling around the country because what he values is accumulating life experiences right now. Right. And, and that mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, that’s not about flexibility, that’s about freedom of choice, right. In, in getting to, to, to do what we wanna do. And he may be farther on this end of the spectrum from, for most people, not everybody’s gonna just quit their job and travel for a year. But it certainly speaks to the, to the mindset and, and, and what’s behind it really is the ultimate freedom, right?

FILBY:

Freedom of tennis. Right. And I think we also, right, and I think there’s, I think the point here is what we’re saying is that there’s no one size fits all. And what having access to the world’s information and the world’s marketplace in your pocket, since you were 13, has done to a generation, is that it’s opened up the level of choice. I mean, when I start, you know, I started my first job, I was working a shoe shop, shining shoes, right? And I had no idea, yeah. I had no idea what my friends were doing at that particular point. Right? When I started my first office job, which was working in a call center, we sort of had the internet but didn’t have social media. I had no idea what my friends were doing at that particular point. Now, when you get to Gen Z, you have a generation that are have made a lot of their own money before they enter the workplace, whether it’s buying and selling secondhand clothes, or creating content, or doing online tutoring, whatever.

It’s, they’ve had the capacity to do that in non-traditional ways. So they’re not working in bars in the same way, or, or, you know, doing cleaning or retail. And then they get to the workplace and they’re kinda like, there’s no allure, there’s no romance, there’s no like, impressive kind of, oh, this is really good. Because actually they’ve already either been making their own money or they’ve seen other people do it at the same time. So this is the first generation that is going to work, you know, working in an office or working either from home, going on social media and going, oh, that’s what other people are doing that looks more interesting, that looks more glamorous. Oh, maybe I should go on a camper van tour of California that looks really cool. Or maybe I should save up all my money and invest it in crypto. That looks really cool. Or that constant like comparative culture, right? Which we just didn’t have when we started work. So that the deference and the allure of work holds no traction for this generation. And that’s very difficult for older generations to understand, because they’re like, look, you get into this company, you’re lucky to be here. You put up, you shut up, you work your way up just like I did. And that’s just not how Gen Z, quite rightly, I would argue, are computing and understanding the world.

VANNOY:

Can I wanna shift gears for a second if I could, Eliza? So I’m imagining, I’m a, I’m a small business owner watching this show, and I’ve got 18 employees. And so I, I, I ha I’m big enough that I have plenty of challenges, but I’m, but I’m small enough, I don’t face these macro issues, right? And I’m like, you know, screw generations, you know, I, I, I, I’m not uncaring, but I’m just, these are my standards. This is how we run the company. And so this is the type of talent we attract. This is the type of talent we retain, and they end up with this homogenous group, whether it’s age, gender, whatever mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, can you speak to the actual business impact in the value of age diversity? Like, how does it, so, so maybe a, maybe a business that doesn’t have an age diverse workforce, why would they even want to seek one out despite the whole labor shortage? And I need to just get people,

FILBY:

Okay, so there’s, there’s two major problems here, is you are eavesdropping on the future and it’s the source of innovation by employing young people. That’s just, I would argue a fact. And you’ll short site your comp company if you do not have the wealth of experience that comes with age. I mean, if you look at tech, for example, tech is one of those sectors that has a very, very low, low diversity in terms of age. It has low diversity in terms of gender, but really in terms of age. And so actually one of the major problems within tech, I think, is they do not have someone putting up their hand going, oh my God, I went through the dotcom crash. We don’t wanna go there. Like, can we pivot this way? You haven’t got that wealth of experience, I would argue in tech, which is perhaps why you see potential car crashes and careering in certain directions.

Yeah. I think if you are a small business of 18 or so people and you are thinking, what’s this generational stuff got to do with me? I think you have to recognize that in particularly engaging with young people, you are securing the long-term future of your business. Because it’s not just your diversity that you’re gonna see in your employees, it’s the diversity in your client base or your customer base. So in order to have that diverse range, you and or just have those conversations with those clients, you have to be reflective of society. That’s the first thing. I think though, it’s really important for small businesses to go, do you know what, this is what we do and this is who we need to execute it. And I’m not gonna try and be something, I’m not, I’m not gonna be chasing, you know, gen Z influencer wannabes, because that’s not what, what my business is about it.

We make crates or something. And, and actually what I need to be is authentically me, authentically this business. And actually, one of the things that Gen Z really responds to, I think is honesty, transparency, and authenticity. They don’t wanna be mis-sold a job. They don’t wanna be mis-sold a position or a business. So actually going, look, the people that work here have to be in the office three days a week, quite often have to be here past six, quite often, have to be on site, quite often have to be doing this, laying it out. And in a way, actually Goldman Sachs is brilliant at this. Goldman Sachs is one of those companies, you know, you will earn shed loads of money and you know, you will not see your family doing it. So, you know, that honesty is refreshing because what we’ve seen over the last 10 to 15 years is arguably a lot of mis-selling corporate cultural purpose, you know, shiny logos, shiny values, and all of this.

And actually, it, it’s the honesty and authenticity and the upfrontness that young people in particular really respond to. I would also say that the interview and application process is absolutely crucial. Cause what you need more than anything else is not skills, is value alignment. That, and I would argue that those, the skills should be taught in the business, don’t expect people to come with those skills established, like we’ve always done throughout history companies are the education, the idea that university or school provides us with educated, skilled, skilled workforce is actually rubbish. What’s clear is that businesses have to have to have that apprenticeship culture. So don’t hire on skills. Hire on values. And I was working with a, you know a legal firm in London not long ago, and one of the things that a partner said to me was, I cannot understand why people applying to our company, because we’ve had so many people leave to start side hustles, to start cupcake businesses, to develop their dancing skills, to go traveling, to do all this. And I was like, the thing I think is key is that perhaps they never wanted to be lawyers in the first place, and actually they were sold a career that maybe wasn’t, that maybe had the status that they were looking for, but not actually was the right career for them. So that’s why the interview process has to be an interrogation of values, not of skills or experience.

VANNOY:

I love that. So we, we’ve talked on the show with other guests before about attracting the right talent and, and the, and the, the, the key there is the right talent, because you could attract people that have the skills to perform the job, but if they’re not aligned to, to your values, they’re not gonna stay. They’re gonna be disengaged. They’re either quit, they’re perform, it’s gonna end badly for both of you so much,

FILBY:

Let

Well, and Mike, I mean, sorry to interrupt. Sorry to interrupt there, but there’s a, there’s, I sit on a board of a business here in the uk, and one of the things that we were looking at was how do you turn your analog workers into digital workers? Because digital talent now is at such a premium and is so expensive. It’s, you are in a war for talent, but it’s all about the money and not about the values and not finding the right, the right people. So it’s, we were sort of discussing, actually, can you really upskill the people from analog to digital and therefore you’ve invested in them, and hopefully that will be rewarded in loyalty. Because one of the things that I think is really true in tech is that they are not going for values alignment. They are going for money. And because they’re in such high demand, they are moving around at such pace.

VANNOY:

And I’ll piggyback on tech. I, I think money. Yes. But I I, what something we see just in our own business is if you’re an engineer, if you’re not getting paid, you want to at least be setting yourself up to get paid and learning new skills, right? It’s the con it’s solving mm-hmm. <Affirmative> really difficult problems in developing the skill of problem solving, developing the skill of, of the latest tech. So it, it, I want to kind of, but

FILBY:

Let’s, I mean Go ahead.

VANNOY:

Go ahead.

FILBY:

Well, I was just gonna say, every company, every company is now a tech company. I mean, even my company, I’m a historian. I mean, I, I’m, I’m obsessed with data. Now I’m looking at the data of posts and articles and et cetera, et cetera. Every company is now a data company. Every company has a responsibility to upskill their workers and then won’t be able to afford to buy that talent in. There’s not enough of it, and it’s at to a high premium.

VANNOY:

So I’ve kind of written down here three big buckets of ways. And, and, and correct me if I’m wrong, cause I wanna, I wanna recap on this, and I wanna just maybe wrap today with some practical advice about how to attract different generations in ways that people might not be thinking about. But you talked, we talked quite a bit about the differences between the four different generations and, and, and the differences are real. And if you don’t think they are, they they are. And so, so, so please understand that. But also coming back to as hu human beings, we’re more alike than we are different. So there are some strategies that come through all this. And, and this might sound silly, but I think it’s real and practical. Number one is simply caring, right? It’s empathy, it’s caring in your employees, or your bosses or your peers will give you a lot of grace when they know the why you’re doing what you’re doing.

And if you, if they feel the sense that you, you’re gonna cut through a lot of that, a lot of those things. Number two is to develop. People need and want to grow, whether it’s stretch assignments, acquiring new skills some people care about money and so they need new skills to get even more money. Some people don’t care about money. It’s all about the challenge. In all cases, development of skills solves all those problems, right? And then the last one you just kind of talk about what is, is values and value alignment when you know, I, I suspect Elon Musk is not a terribly easy person, person to work for, but you know, if you, if your mission in life is to help put people on, on, on Mars, you know, you know where you go work, right? And so if, if you’re evaluating are all about work life balance and taking care of children, that looks a whole heck of a lot different than it does if you’re trying to put somebody on Mars.

It, it in, in, and what that work looks like looks very different, but there’s value alignment mm-hmm. <Affirmative> between employer and employee, right? So, so I love all that. Right? Can you, can you just give our our audience some, some practical advice? Okay. We’ve convinced them you can be a more productive organization. You’re gonna, you’re, you’re, you’re building a company of the future by hiring younger generations. You’re being wise by not ignoring older generations because they’ve, they’ve seen these paths before. They can see around corners for you, I believe you, I need to go recruit and have better diversity of age. What are the things that employers can do to achieve that?

FILBY:

Okay, number one is I would basically have the generations collide as much as you possibly can and listen to each other. Listen on a really personal level is what it was like to be the first woman in, in the company, or what it was like to grow up with a smartphone in your pocket. And, and help create that empathy and that generational understanding. Number two, I would think about education as a democratic skill swap across the generations rather than just old informing the young. So one of the things that they do in France, for example, is that they deliberately within companies match up those employees who are over 50, with those that are under 30. And actually, the idea is to mirror this is best done if you mirror within the family, the grand grandparents and grandchild, the parents, and the parent and child.

Because if you have a bigger age gap actually within the workplace, that can often be more fertile way of mentoring and cross dialogue and education because you do not have that perhaps tension or ego or slight conflict as you do with the parent child. So actually making the age gap bigger with that reverse mentoring, that mentoring relationship, I think is really important. The third thing I would do is, is really actually is give, give the different generations a voice and enable them in an informal or a formal way to really understand that everyone’s at a different life stage. And so what, what things need to be taken into consideration within this company, because we are an age diverse team that have different issues going on. Whether it’s, I need to go and look after my mum in, in a care home once every Tuesday, or I need to actually make sure that my dog gets a walk on Friday afternoon, whatever it is. I think one of the, one of the key ways of bringing the generations together is in a co-creating format in which we can all sit down and go, do you know what, this is what our lives look like. We’re all different ages. That feels very different. We are living d different experiences. What is it that the company needs or possibly can do to accommodate that? But crucially, what do we all need to understand and empathize with in order to just take that into account as colleagues?

VANNOY:

I think that’s a perfect place to wrap. As I really enjoyed talking to you today. I, is, is there a way that you’d like to ask our audience or offer, offer? How, how is it that you help your clients and, and, and companies or employees? How, how, how could we help help you help them?

FILBY:

So I spend a lot of my time helping companies, really tackling their specific challenges with the multi-generational work workforce in the hybrid era, helping them understand the different generations. I do a lot of course based work on bridging the generation gap, but also on a policy level, what com what specific initiatives need to happen. I run a online course. I also have a fortnightly newsletter, which you is free to subscribe, go to www ina philby com. I also have my own podcast on the future of work with a, it’s called The Shift with Jimmy McLaughlin and Eliza Filby. And yeah, stay in Touch via my website and on my socials. Thank you. So thanks

VANNOY:

For we be sure to pop up on exit form for anybody watching this live that if you want to get in contact with Eliza, that we’ll create that opportunity. And if you’re watching this on our YouTube, check the check the, the links. We’ll have a link to Eliza’s site on the, on the bottom. So these are complex issues. This is what Asure is here to do, right? So the purpose of this show is to share the very best information we possibly can with employers. And I, one of the things I maybe I love and I hate about hr it, it, it’s so sometimes focused on compliance. It’s the legalistic, it’s the Title seven discrimination versus how, what is the actual value of building diverse teams, right? And so we, we always play two sides of this, this coin where what we do as a is we help small businesses stay compliant in an ever-changing world where federal laws become, state laws become local city laws.

 It’s extremely complex. So we can help unpack that, but mostly what we care about, it’s, it’s, it’s in the name Human Resources. What is, how do you tap into the resources of the human and see, see the, see that human as as a capital? How can you, how can you more intelligently deploy that capital by building great teams? So if there’s anything we can do at Asure to help help you with that audience we, we’d be happy to do so as well. Until next week Eliza, love talking to you. This was a great conversation. Thank you. Love to do again someday. And thanks to everybody else. Until next week. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.