The rising threat of a skills shortage has been fast-tracked by the global Pandemic, making workplace planning more essential than ever before, as organisations are under pressure to face the challenges ahead. Generational Diversity is key to creating a strong and versatile organization for today’s shifting market.  

The impact of COVID-19 has demonstrated the critical importance of workplace planning, to ensure businesses can respond appropriately to the disruption of the Pandemic. However, by focusing on the immediate issues relating to COVID, many organisations are forgetting to consider the importance of maintaining a multigenerational workforce. Many businesses do not realize that it is simply impossible to put together a successful workforce plan without accounting for age demographics and generational diversity. So why is it so important to stay focused on generational diversity, even during the aftermath of COVID?   

Shifting demographic trends

Businesses need to have the flexibility to adjust to shifting trends, and many of these shifts are related to shifting age composition across markets and geographies. The “age” of your workforce affects the demands of your market and the longevity of your workforce. For example, in a country where an increase in life expectancy is coupled with declining birth rates, the result is an ageing workforce; you can avoid a looming skills shortage by diversifying your team, so you gain greater versatility and shared knowledge.  

Global disruption

The global marketplace is facing many disruptive factors such as COVID, global warming, digitalization and industry convergence. As a result, organisations are facing new complex business challenges that require fresh innovative responses, beyond the scope of traditional hierarchical business models. These organisations need generational diversity and collaboration to maintain the collective strength to face these challenges. Ideally, generational diversity will create a workforce that blends vitality, creativity and idealism with knowledge, experience and resilience; employees can work together, leveraging each other’s strengths and competencies, in an environment where they all feel recognized and compensated for their contribution.  However, without strong communication and inspired leadership, this mix of experience and creative energy can become a volatile unproductive environment. 

The growing skills crisis

A business can only thrive if it has access to the right skills and resources. The first step for any business is to identify those essential skills for success. This is an ongoing task – as digitalization and AI continue to rise, there will be a continual shift in the range of human skills and digital skills required by any business. The skills that are essential to your business today may be different to those you relied on a year ago, and may not be the skills you need a year from now.  

Once you know the specialist skills you require, you need a team of employees that are proficient in these skills. Yet as the essential skills are constantly shifting and evolving, you also need a versatile and innovative workforce to keep up with the latest challenges. 

employers have a better chance to secure all the skills they need when they leverage competencies across generational cohorts. Post-pandemic recovery will rely on employers offering the best possible environment for a widely diverse group of people, to ensure they are all motivated and productive, while employers must keep up-to-date with any changes in the skills needed to keep the business viable and productive.

Skill shortage is another challenge employers face when trying to securing the right skills. The skills gap has been a significant challenge for business since the early 2000s, when technology dominated business, creating a potential workforce crisis for most of the world’s largest economies.  Prior to COVID, inaccessibility of key skills was cited as the number one threat to business success in many regions including Asia – in 2020, the World Economic Forum Future of Jobs 2020 predicted that within three years, 42% of jobs would require three years, affecting more than 1 billion workers globally by 2030. The global pandemic has fast-tracked this crisis, with many industries forced to reinvent themselves to survive. Workers are in the position of having to learn new skills in order to adapt their experience to digitalization.   

Addressing the skills crisis

Generational diversity is the key to solving the skills crisis. Employers need people who are versatile, innovative and committed to being life-learners, always eager to learn new skills and consider new directions. A university degree isn’t necessarily the best indicator of an ongoing thirst for learning. While older generations haven’t been encouraged to develop new skills in order to stay relevant in the workforce, younger generations haven’t been taught the skills that make them easily employable.  Employers must also foster a culture of ongoing learning. The employees who thrive in this culture will be the ones who adapt more readily to change and who are more likely to explore new solutions and new directions. This attitude can be found across all age groups, and by focusing on a generational diversity, employers also benefit from a diverse range of experience.  According to a recent PWC study, organisations around the globe that have established a strong upskilling program reported a stronger corporate culture and more effective employee engagement and innovation, accelerated digital transformation, more successful talent acquisition and higher workforce productivity. Yet only 18% of organisations around the globe had actually established and nurtured an upskilling program. Somehow the majority of employers are overlooking the option of investing in upskilling opportunities for their employees, despite recognizing the growing issues of a skills shortage. Organisations that do invest in reskilling will find it easier to hold their ground in an ever-shifting global marketplace. 

Benefits of remote/hybrid workplaces

Workplaces have become more flexible in response to the COVID pandemic, with more employees adapting their role so they can work from home. This has forced both employers and employees to adopt technology and digital tools at a rapid pace, in order to ensure their survival as businesses and individuals. Remote working has also bridged the generation gap, by introducing the concept of flexible working hours to all employees. Previously younger members of the workforce were criticized for demanding the flexibility to work anywhere, any time, but now employers and employees of all ages are seeing the benefits of this arrangement. Older workers have found a better balance between work responsibilities and family time. Workers also have the opportunity to choose a simpler lifestyle, as they don’t need to live in easy proximity to their workplace, and employers can hire people from overseas, when the job can be done remotely. Businesses can potentially save hundreds of millions in real estate as they don’t need offices in prime locations. 

Yet remote working does have drawbacks, primarily the sense of isolation.  The younger generation who are new to the workforce have not enjoyed the opportunity to build a rapport with co-workers, while older employees may feel deprived of the sense of identity they gained through work. Organisations will need to learn how to develop a sense of connection and unity between employees, using tools such as collaborative technologies in order to run workshops and conferences. New strategies must also be established to support the physical and mental health of employees, as isolation will add to the usual strain of everyday life and it will be difficult for managers to monitor their wellbeing remotely.

The power of diversification 

Diversification is the key to future success – build your business with a diverse generational team, and set up the means to grow and diversify skills in response to technological advances. Set up a versatile communication system so your team can interact just as productively from remote locations as they can in person. By embracing diversity, you can build the strongest and most resilient team, capable of adapting to any situation.