Category: Future of Work

The global workplace and the very nature of work itself are changing at a rapid pace. AARP has been calling attention to this long before the pandemic. We see this in the findings of the Future of Jobs 2020 survey from the World Economic Forum, the findings of which make it clear that the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the arrival of the future of work. According to the survey, 50 percent of employers now plan to accelerate the automation of their work, while over 80 percent are set to expand the digitization of their work processes.

And yet, human workers are in demand and that demand is ever-growing. Related to that is another significant change: Workforce demographics are quickly shifting before our eyes. Today’s older workers are healthier than the older workers of previous generations, and many older individuals are eager to keep working and contributing. Simultaneously, declining birth rates have led to fewer people entering the workforce.

Yet despite the need for talent in the workplace, age remains an equity issue, even though many employers have not historically thought of it in that light. According to June 2021 data from the Bureau of Labor Studies, 55.3 percent of job seekers 55 years of age or older were long-term unemployed, compared to just 36 percent of job seekers ages 16 to 54. Too often, the older worker gets discriminated against and overlooked, perennially facing their own unique challenges and costing our economy billions in lost productivity.

If you’re an employer seeking to satisfy shareholders and outperform expectations, you might want to steer away from such tendencies. Whether you’re a nonprofit or corporate employer, you have clients and customers, and those clients and customers are aging like never before in the history of the world. And so to respond to your customers, it’s imperative that you understand them.  

In other words, how we adapt now will have a lasting impact on the success of both employers and employees for decades to come. Our research shows that employers that invest in a multigenerational workforce will have a competitive edge over those that do not.

---

A formula for equity built on logic

Many global business leaders already get it. In the 2020 Global Employer Survey of OECD Countries, 83 percent said a multigenerational workforce is critical to business growth and success. But the understanding may be somewhat limited, and many of those same businesses have a way to go: 53 percent of the executives surveyed do not include age in a diversity and inclusion policy. 

In our post-COVID environment there’s a long to-do list — and a long to-change list. One critical element to any lasting change is the ability to harness a powerful force that lies at a certain nexus—of creativity, innovation, and, yes, equity and inclusion.

The Equity Formula

Why the latter?  Because innovation requires inclusion. It’s a formula of logic: If innovation demands creativity, and creativity demands inclusion, then innovation calls for inclusion.

In other words, focusing on age equity unlocks myriad opportunities for workers and organizational leaders alike. Yet, while the formula should be easy to understand, there is still some reluctance to solve it.

---

How the Equity Formula works

Too often, when evaluating the strengths and potential contributions of a job candidate, someone asks the preferential question, “Will they fit in with our culture?”

Though workplaces may think they want a culture fit, the homogeneity that comes from hiring people who look just like you, work exactly like you do, and come from similar backgrounds tends to hamper the innovation necessary to increase revenue — to say nothing of the historical inequities it likely perpetuates.

By contrast, diversity and inclusion make us smarter. It stimulates thought and expands the minds of those who want to help solve the problems they didn’t know existed. Decades of research shows that socially diverse and inclusive groups are more innovative than homogenous groups. Diversity and inclusion acknowledge the importance of novel information and perspectives, leading to more informed decisions and solutions.

Yet, despite increased attention on diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace, one critical form of diversity that needs more attention from organizational leads, hiring directors, and human resource teams is age diversity. 

Of course, it’s not a matter of simply getting a more diverse team in the room and calling it a day. Giving the full collection of diverse voices equal airtime is critical. Valuing all contributors and their input equally allows everyone the opportunity to offer insights that drive real value.  Inclusion efforts must have at their foundation the creation or realignment of a “speak up” culture. Employees who are empowered with the ability to be creative are four times more likely to contribute to their full potential. Multiply that by a whole staff, and the creative and institutional power compounds from there.

As you look at your teams, your workplace, your customers and stakeholders, and how your executive leadership and management run your business, ask yourself:

• 1. What are we trying to build or do and how can we ensure alignment between our annual and quarterly goals and the inclusion of who does the work to reach those goals?
• 2. How do we ensure inclusive diversity of all kinds for this project, team, initiative, group structure, or outcomes-based goals and responsibilities?
• 3. Are we finding ways to bring different voices, levels and years of experience, thoughts, ideas, and expertise together in a way that will turn creativity into innovation?
• 4. When turning creativity into innovation, do we have diverse voices and experiences as well as a mix of leaders, managers, and front-line staff at the table to make informed, actionable decisions?
• 5. How have we embedded responsibility and accountability for diversity and inclusion at all levels throughout the organization?

Remember the Equity Formula: Innovation demands creativity, which in turn demands diversity and inclusion. To be successful, companies and all organizations must include age as a workplace equity issue, for age is a critical component to diversity. It’s not just the right thing to do; it’s the smart thing to do.  Inclusivity creates an atmosphere where great things can happen, and where market-growth opportunity can be explosive.

---

Nuts and bolts

To build and maintain an age-inclusive workforce, businesses need to focus on three main areas:

Lay the policy backbone to support your multigenerational workforce.
Starting with your company policies, ensure that diversity strategies include age, and that measures are in place to ensure policy translates to organizational and hiring practices. Implement processes to reduce age bias in sourcing and recruitment as well as the interview and selection processes. Further reduce workplace prejudice by offering manager and employee trainings. Engage in strategic workforce planning to reduce skill shortages down the line. Focus on long-term retention by offering employees services such as career planning, long-term financial planning, and phased retirement programs. And utilize team-based performance systems to enhance productivity and collaboration on multi-generational teams.

Make jobs attractive to a diverse talent base and workforce.
Consider the needs of your diverse workforce—from work-life balance to flexible work/telework schedules and flex/leave policies for employees who are caregivers. (Many workers age 50-plus are.) Potential employees place top value on visible signs of an employer’s concern for the physical, mental, social, and financial lives of their workers.

Maintain and develop employee skills across generations.
To maximize a multigenerational workforce, companies must have a comprehensive program for not only developing employee skills, but also ensuring those skills get sharpened and stay up to date so that all generations of workers, from younger to older, have equally relevant skill sets. In addition, trainings (individual, group, and team), mentoring, and reverse mentoring are all proven methods to strengthen the skills of an organization’s diverse set of employees. And in the case of mentoring, both the mentored and the mentor learn from each other.

---

Growing body of use cases 

Studies show that an age-diverse workforce strengthens a company’s resilience especially in times of crisis, missed earnings targets, and economic downturn.. And at the level of both the individual company and the broader economy, it elevates productivity, unlocks markets, sparks innovation, and boosts GDP. Meanwhile, in the public sector, snapshots from countries around the world reveal exciting progress in supporting their economies and doing what is right to ensure diversity and inclusivity, particularly as it relates to age.

In Japan, employment opportunities for older adults are a key component of the government’s national strategy to revitalize the economy. Significant efforts have been made to assist job placement and extend retirement age.

In Singapore, as Minister of Health Gan Kim Yong has noted, the country created its Action Plan for Successful Aging years ago. The government works with employers and unions to enhance senior employability and inclusive workplace policies.

In the U.K., the 2010 Equality Act protects workers from age discrimination in all aspects of their employment. In turn, older adults are either prolonging retirement or re-entering the workforce in new fields through entrepreneurial support programs.

---

COVID-19’s wake up call

Adapting to a new world of work, a demand accelerated by COVID-19, requires us to take deliberate action in fostering greater equity and inclusion to address systemic shifts in the workforce and future-of-work trends like automation. There’s no better time than now to rewrite the rules and build a new normal that embraces the benefits of a multigenerational workforce.  We need to think critically with an age-diversity state of mind about how diversity that is inclusive of age, race, gender, and culture will come together to define the new world economy.

For many of us, the COVID years will be a time of reflection, a time when the disruption of it all provided an impetus to re-examine things we had been doing for so long that we had stopped questioning why we ever started doing them in the first place.

For many of us, that reflection focuses on our work: what we do, where and how we do it, and perhaps most significantly, why we do it.

Our NationSwell Council community members are no exception to this period of reflection. My fellow leaders are at the vanguard of innovation in the modern workplace, meeting the disruption in COVID’s wake with the pragmatic solutions our workforce needs in order to bring about our best future. 

I talked to my fellow Council members about what they’re doing to bring the future of work into our present. Here are the expert insights they’ve shared.

---

Acknowledge that many of your employees have gone through a personal reset and are re-examining everything, including work.

In many instances, the reset began on an individual level — almost as if we all became aware that this crisis was too important to waste. We started questioning ourselves: parents, forced to homeschool their children, started rethinking how and what their children were learning; people who, pre-pandemic, routinely travelled on business, learned to appreciate family meals on a regular basis; workers who hardly knew their neighbors and rarely saw them now wave at them out windows and across porches. 

For the first time, many people became much more present in their own lives.

“I think it’s an outgrowth of the fact that we had a really profound year,” Brad Kelsheimer, CFO of Lumina Foundation, said. “People have come to a more realistic grip with mortality. And so part of my reset is asking myself, ‘Who is the authentic me?’ And I’ve encouraged my team at Lumina — both my executive colleagues and also my team that reports up into me — to think, similarly, about what we learn about ourselves during this reset.”

From there, leaders can take the insight from their employees’ lived experiences and allow them to choose how they and you will co-create the future of work together.

“This feels like the very first time that all of us have been asked what we really want as workers,” Lexi Paza, Deputy Director of Real Estate and Operations at Tides, shared. “And the buildings, I mean, the physical plants that I manage, they now have to match and meet the person on what they want, and not the other way around.”

“We as people have been asked to bend to what the spaces in which we do our work can provide,” Lexi continued. “And for the very first time, I feel the power structure has reversed. Someone can say, ‘This is my safety. This is how I’ve been working best the last 18 months, because I was able to create an entire world around me. Can my workplace now match that?’”

“There’s now a thoughtfulness to the real estate, to the design, and to the health and wellness aspects of the physical workplace — and that’s all very new,” Arsha Cazazian-Clement, Director of Global Real Estate for Shearman & Sterling, shared. “I don’t think any companies felt forced to actually engage on a one-on-one basis with each employee to figure out how they work best. I think this past year has really shaken everyone, and employers are starting to realize that we are all individuals. And if you want talent, you have to understand that not all talent does the same thing, or thinks the same way, or is cut from the same cloth. If you want to innovate, you have to figure out how to support them.”

---

Listen to what your employees are telling you about what they need across all aspects of the workplace. 

One of the most significant upheavals has been the reversal of who has a voice in shaping the new world of work. In the past employers dictated where employees worked, what physical environment worked best for them and what role best suited the organization.

“I used this as an opportunity to springboard the conversation about how we actually design around people and what they want,” Arsha said. “It might seem obvious that we should design our offices for the humans who work there, but in most cases, that’s not usually what has happened. The dollars talk first.” 

“To design for humans, we really got entrenched in data; we started to appreciate the value of data,” Arsha continued. “And in order to extract that data, you first have to provide a safe haven for people to share their thoughts and ideas. We charged middle management with helping to obtain that genuine, sincere feedback that we were really hungry for so we could then bake it into our new space search, and bake it into the deployment of a workplace strategy that had been quite traditional over the past two decades.”

---

Continue making decisions from a place of shared humanity. 

To build community in the new world of work, be deliberate and intentional about recreating the best of what employees created at home while making sure to give them what they missed by not being in an office.

“We can all leverage this once in a lifetime opportunity to be more intentional about how we gather at work, ensuring it’s more fulfilling than simply cohabiting an office space or transacting on tasks,” Lucie Addison, Learning and Improvement Lead at Einhorn Collaborative, shared. “Our grantee partners have taught us ways to create moments of connection — everything from a two-minute question to kick off a meeting to sharing a moving experience together. Indeed, it will be more important than ever as we all navigate big changes. The challenges of the pandemic will not all melt away when we come back in person. The more connected, compassionate, and human we can be, the better equipped we’ll be to put our energy into the most mission-critical work. During times of uncertainty and change, relationships are what tether us.”

By focusing on the shared humanity of your workforce, you’ll build more cohesive teams — and emerge a better leader in the process.

“I definitely think that the pandemic has helped us be better leaders; it’s really emphasized the need for creating a strong unified purpose on the team and for being really clear,” Ron Martere, Vice President of Steelcase, said. “I think there’s been such a roller coaster with everything, and every industry has been affected. Coming back, there’s a need to build strong teams that are unified in purpose, that have clear expectations, that can deliver results, that understand not only their role but also what role their role plays in the overall organization’s success.”

The pandemic humanized workers and the workplace more than ever. Accept that you will make decisions that need to be changed. However, if you continue to give your employees a genuine voice in how they can thrive, your community will emerge stronger. Create a great work experience for your people, and they’ll want to come because they know they can learn there, they can get their work done better, and they can be more productive. They can feel that shared sense of purpose. You don’t do any of those things to your work environment, you’ll find it difficult to retain employees against the allure of other workplaces who are building for a human-centered future.

---

In reality, the future of work is now — and we are creating it together. The more voices, ideas and insights we bring to this conversation, the richer the dialogue and the options. Please reach out to us to be a part of this important ongoing conversation. 

For #BuildItBackBetter, NationSwell asked some of our nation’s most celebrated purpose-driven leaders how they’d build a society that is more equitable and resilient than the one we had before COVID-19. We have compiled and lightly edited their answers.

This article is part of the #BuildItBackBetter track “The Relational Era: Building a Culture of Connection, Bridging and Belonging” — presented in partnership with Einhorn Collaborative.

What does it really mean to listen?

When we meet others, are we listening for similarities or differences? Are we listening to confirm the stereotypes we hold — or to challenge them? Are we listening with an open or closed mind?

In order to build a culture of connection, bridging and belonging, we must begin listening for similarities and differences, challenging our own stereotypes of ourselves and each other and opening our minds to the possibilities that we can learn a lot from each other about what it means to be human.

At the Project for the Advancement of our Common Humanity, active listening means replacing judgement with curiosity and asking questions that allow others to reveal their common humanity. If we start from a place of curiosity and listen for what we can learn from others, we disrupt not only the stereotypes we hold of them but also the cultural ideologies that promote them.  Ideologies such as patriarchy, white supremacy and unfettered capitalism that dominate American culture are premised on a hierarchy of humanness in which some humans — like rich, white men — are considered more human than others — like less wealthy people of color who do not identify as men. This hierarchy gets in the way of our capacity for empathy, mutual understanding and cooperation. 

Humans are naturally empathic and interpersonally curious; we need close relationships to thrive.

Yet we live in a culture that devalues, discourages and even mocks those human capacities and needs. We value leaders for their capacity to influence other people, rather than to listen to others and learn from them. We define maturity as the ability to be self-sufficient, rather than to have mutually supportive friendships. We define success as making a lot of money rather than helping to build strong communities. We privilege stereotypically masculine qualities over those deemed feminine. We privilege thinking over feeling. We maintain dehumanizing stereotypes about each other that deaden our ability to connect across social divides. This clash between our nature and our culture is at the root of our crisis of connection, a crisis that has led to soaring rates of loneliness, depression, suicide, violence, and hate crimes, as well as income inequality, educational inequity, homelessness, and other sorts of social ills. 

Thus, autonomy and independence is valued more than connection.

A critical part of the solution to the crisis is active listening, with the intent to understand rather than to confirm or to simply wait for our turn to speak. At PACH, we have been training students and faculty in middle schools, colleges and universities across the country in our practice of transformative interviewing, a method of active listening. Our Listening Project defines listening as the process of asking follow-up questions that allow others to be seen as they see themselves rather than as we stereotype them to be. The ultimate aim of PACH and of the Listening Project is to create a culture that better aligns with our nature rather than gets in the way.

We have the capacity within us to change the culture. Now is the time to build our culture back better. 

Niobe Way is a professor of developmental psychology at New York University, co-editor of The Crisis of Connection: Roots, Consequences, and Solutions, and founder of the Project for the Advancement of Our Common Humanity. Crystal Clarke is director of PACH and of the Listening Project. 

COVID-19 is affecting employees of all ages and forward-thinking employers are responding.

2020 has turned out to be a challenging year — most especially because of the multiple crises created by the COVID-19 pandemic.  In addition to the enormous effect on the health and wellbeing of people around the world, the crisis has had profound impacts on work and the workforce.  Millions of people in the United States alone have lost their jobs, and millions more have had to work in different ways.  

Prior to the pandemic, AARP already had been tracking the extraordinary implications of the growing megatrend of healthy longevity — in which people are living longer, healthier lives — and the resulting expansion of the multigenerational workforce.  With workers wanting or needing to work longer as they age, it is now common to see people from four or five generations standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the workforce. Amid the unprecedented disruption of the pandemic, we’re now asking: How is this crisis affecting the multigenerational workforce, and what are forward-thinking employers doing to adjust to the sudden shift in how they and their employees work?

In a recent interview, Reuters special projects editor Lauren Young sat down with Sharyn Jones, the head of talent management for MassMutual, a Fortune 500 insurance company with 7,500 employees, to talk about the benefits of the multigenerational workforce.  In particular, they discussed how MassMutual has adjusted their policies to support their employees, and how they have leveraged the challenges created by COVID-19 to bring people together and improve their culture.  Here are some insights from that conversation:

1. Generational diversity is key to innovative outcomes. On this point, Jones could not have been clearer: The more diversity you have in an organization, the better off your organization will be.  Diversity encompasses a range of factors—whether it’s gender, race, ethnicity or age. With greater diversity, “you’re going to have better outcomes, more innovative outcomes, more collaboration. And you’re going to be a more agile organization,” she said.

2. You must intentionally cultivate the benefits of age diversity. Having an age-diverse, multigenerational workforce brings many benefits — but those benefits can be magnified by design.  MassMutual has a reverse mentoring program called “Truth to Power,” where seasoned leaders regularly come together with several younger staffers to talk about what is going on in the business, in contrast to traditional mentoring where more junior professionals learn from those with more seniority or experience.  The more tenured leaders ask: What are the latest trends? What do we need to think about with respect to certain markets?  How do we need to change the way we’re doing business?  Jones shared that Roger Crandall, the CEO of MassMutual, has been participating in the program since it began in 2014 and comes away from each conversation having “learned so much about what is going on in the world.”

3. There are many types of caregivers, and employers must meet them where they are. At AARP, we recently released our “Caregiving in the U.S.” report and found that there are nearly 48 million caregivers tending to someone over the age of 18. Nearly one-quarter (23%) of the family caregivers are millennials and 61% of all family caregivers are working. Even before COVID-19, employees often wore “dual hats” as caregivers, but more than ever, people are doing their jobs while caring for others simultaneously.  Jones said MassMutual recognizes that these challenges are front and center now for everybody, and the company expanded its caregiving leave in recognition of the fact that its employees are caring for children, spouses, parents or other loved ones.

4. Culture remains critical and can be strengthened, even now. Jones emphasized how important it has been for employees to stay connected, particularly during these difficult times, and how critical intentional informality has been to that process.  That’s why her company promotes “walk and talks” and virtual happy hours where work cannot be discussed as a means of “encouraging people to let their guards down and connect.” A recent annual survey revealed that 95% of staff are “proud to be at the company.” “We’re connecting almost more than we were before,” Jones observed. “Before, it was happenchance. Now, it’s intentional.”

Of course, these are just some of the ways employers can leverage the multigenerational workforce during COVID-19, but what Jones has spearheaded at MassMutual is instructive for leaders across all sectors as they implement new practices that lead to long-term growth and success.  That’s why AARP is currently taking an in-depth look at policies that support the multigenerational workforce through a collaborative initiative with the World Economic Forum and OECD called “Living, Learning & Earning Longer.”  This includes working with major multinational companies to demonstrate the business case for age diversity and inclusion, which will be released in the form of a digital learning platform later this year.

To learn more about this work, or to join our learning collaborative of multinational employers, please visit our site.

Peter Rundlet is Vice President of International Affairs at AARP.

The virus’ unexpected consequence was forcing us to create less rigid work environments.

The COVID-19 crisis has tested us all. Across the country and around the world, “business as usual” suddenly wasn’t — revealing how fragile our work routines really were. But the pandemic has also shown us something else: our ability to adapt and innovate is stronger than we thought. 

Many of the changes that have been forced upon us were long overdue — especially changes in how we work. Some of these changes were accommodations for which workers had been pushing prior to the pandemic. But when the crisis abates, making these accommodations universal will have given businesses the footing to emerge with a stronger framework for the future.

“Amid that disruption, almost quietly, we’ve laid the groundwork for what could be some of the greatest advancements we have ever seen for diversity,” wrote Fast Company’s Arthur Woods. ”Notice new discussions we’re having around personal needs and challenges… Look at the new workplace policies that have shifted to adapt to human needs.”

Before the crisis, millions of Americans who didn’t have paid sick leave still had to come to work even when they were ill if they wanted their paycheck. But to cope with COVID-19 and contain the pandemic, many large companies implemented a temporary paid sick leave policy. Darden Restaurants made the policy permanent, saying it had been working on implementing paid sick leave even before the pandemic —  and others may follow suit. 

Another change is more fundamental: COVID-19 has transformed how and where we work. In just a few weeks, the percentage of employees who work from home jumped from  31% to 62%, Gallup reported. 

Implementing these new policies on a large scale has led to an unexpected outcome: a broad swathe of employees are becoming more productive, such as: 

• • Workers with disabilities, and those who are neurodivergent, who are able to tailor their work environment to their specific needs, rather than those of their able-bodied colleagues. 
  •  Workers caring for children or elders, who are able to arrange their schedules so they can achieve on their work tasks while still meeting family obligations
  • Older workers, who may also be in the two categories above or divide their time between work and other activities such as volunteering

Taken together, almost all workers fall into at least one of these categories. Paid sick, remote work and flexible schedules are all policies that enable more kinds of people to participate in the workplace, regardless of age, home life, or health status. 

That means these policies foster diversity. Organizations that have embraced diversity and inclusive workforce practices often have a competitive advantage: They have access to lived experience and insights from many different perspectives, therefore they are able to be more nimble and resilient when faced with a challenge. 

AARP’s collaboration “Living, Learning and Earning Longer,” in partnership with the World Economic Forum and OECD, provides more evidence. Diverse companies, the AARP found, can …

• • CREATE: “An organization’s diversity practices contribute directly to greater employee engagement.1 American business units in the top quartile of engagement realize 21% higher profitability than those in the bottom quartile.” 
  • PROSPER: “The multigenerational workforce can offer benefits to countries, employers, and employees. Countries can gain greater economic output, vibrant communities, and societies that are resilient to demographic shifts. Employers can benefit from the retention of intellectual capital, a more stable, productive and engaged workforce, and closer alignment to market needs. Employees can obtain greater self-fulfillment, financial security, and skill revitalization.” 
  • INVEST: “Mature workers around the world may have social, cultural, and human knowledge that is essential to an organization’s institutional memory. The loss of institutional knowledge can lead to a lower capacity for innovation and growth, reduced efficiency, and the loss of competitive advantage.” 

In the era of COVID-19, companies have a unique opportunity: a chance to redesign work in a way that will make them more resilient to the next crisis, by adapting policies and practices to meet the needs of employees. These are changes that can create a better normal – one that employees are craving.

“More than half of at-home workers say they would prefer to continue working remotely as much as possible once restrictions on businesses and school closures are lifted,” Gallup reported. And management is catching on, too: of managers who oversaw remote employees, “55% say that once government restrictions are lifted and kids are back in school, the experience of COVID-19 will change their remote work policy.”

When employers invest in employees — specifically in ways that signal that to the employee that they’re valued as human beings and as contributors to the bottom line — it creates a culture of adaptive innovation. 

COVID-19 has made work more intimate: “You can now see your LGBTQIA+ colleague is also a working parent balancing teaching her daughter at home,” wrote Woods. “While on a call, you now are aware your Latinx colleague has a preexisting medical condition and is also caring for an elderly parent.”

Everyone, it turns out, has special needs.

In order to continue this, companies have to be intentional: No company has done this perfectly before, but now there’s an open door for companies to redefine how they do business — and to make business both more successful and more human.

“We have an opportunity to consider this as a social experiment at scale, taking the time to identify any benefits that we have not previously considered,” wrote Sean Gilroy and Leena Haque for the World Economic Forum. 

“If we want to introduce new ideas to society that might offer us a more desirable means of living,” they concluded, “this is a good time to discuss not just the ‘what’ but also the ‘why’ and ‘how’.”

This article was produced in partnership with AARP. You can learn more here about how AARP is shaping the Future of Work.