The Modern Workforce
This is the first time in history that five generations are working together.
As a result of healthier living and the financial hurdles to retirement, we find traditionalists and Baby Boomers still in the workforce. Generation X is well established, and in the coming years Millennials will be ready to move into leadership positions. The digital natives of Generation Z are just beginning to enter the fray.
Having five generations is like having five wildly different personalities on a team. There are going to be challenges and there are going to be benefits. To manage a workforce that spans five generations, you have to get at the root of human nature to bond the age gaps.
At the heart of it all, a sixty-five year old and a twenty-five year old want the same things. Their expectations, interests, styles, and values may vary, but ultimately they want the same thing.
What is that thing?
Engagement.
Engagement is an emotional commitment to an organization of people and its goals; because engagement is rooted in emotions, it is often elusive to define.
Though engagement can be difficult to quantify, the literature in organizational psychology shows that what we call “engagement” is a significant factor of employee wellbeing, productivity, and retention.
Engagement is Simple
Ultimately, engagement boils down to this simple truth:
We would rather be happy than sad.
We want to be engaged in our work. We want to like the people with whom we work. We want meaning in our work; we don’t want our jobs to be in opposition with who we are as human beings. We want to be led by someone we respect and admire.
It’s not rocket science, and yet many organizations lack a workplace culture that bolsters this simple truth, instead favoring self-serving leadership and status quo thinking.
Related: The Surprisingly Simple Way to Boost Your Productivity
Engagement is Universal
It doesn’t matter whether you were born in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, or 90s.
No one wants to dread going to work or to spend their entire day counting down the seconds until they can go home.
In the end, we all prefer meaningful work to mind-numbing work. We all have universal needs that we can’t turn on just because we punch a time clock, put on a suit, or sit in a corner office.
Employee engagement is:
Universal. Fundamental. Imperative.
Without it, people leave. Companies lose profit. That’s why we wrote this e-book.
Equilibria’s organizational psychologists have distilled their knowledge of human behavior and leadership into actionable, proven steps that you can apply to your employee engagement strategy today!