Five generations, sharing the same office space. How do great businesses build a culture that supports every employee in their workforce? Gen Z (18%), the digital natives finding their way through the modern era, surpassed Baby Boomers (15%) in terms of overall labor force population in 2024, per Department of Labor data cited by SHRM. The impact of Gen Z in the workplace will only continue to rise, as the percentage of Silent/Traditionalists diminishes, and Baby Boomer retirements continue while younger professionals find their way to more management and leadership roles. Millennial and Gen X employees bridge the gap, with varying degrees of traditional work values and digital fluency across both groups. If you’re building a playbook for managing team members with different experiences, what will help your business most in the years to come? It’s time to develop an understanding of how everyone prefers to show up to work. From there, you can bring the best elements of each generation’s work styles to your workplace. Adjust How You Communicate, Not Just How Often Baby Boomers and Gen X learned to share direct, honest communication through trusted channels. Millennials and Gen Z learn how to manage several different channels for different kinds of communication. 65 percent of Baby Boomers prefer face-to-face interactions versus digital communications. Meanwhile, 59% of Millennial and Gen Z professionals believe email or asynchronous messaging tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams are the most effective way to work. Is there a middle ground to be explored? For your business, consider: What meetings are most effective for your team to host in-person? How might you balance in-person updates, training, or mentorship with virtual communications for day-to-day check-ins? How often does your team need to communicate synchronously? How and where you choose to communicate as a business, and the composition of your team, will play a large factor in how team members across different generations will learn to work with each other. Make Growth Paths Visible, Not Assumed Retaining institutional knowledge from Baby Boomer and Gen X employees will help businesses continue their growth into the future. At the same time, 86% of Gen Z workers prioritize career development through mentorship. That opens the door to an excellent opportunity for cross-generational work. Millennials, at the age where they are stepping into larger leadership roles at work and often starting families at home, are thinking about growth from a different angle. Economic conditions are slowing the “job-hopping” era of career growth, and more Millennials are turning to mentorship and career development as their next step. This creates prime opportunities for businesses to establish succession planning strategies for younger employees to step into larger roles and grow with the business. READ MORE: Succession Planning for Small Businesses In your business: Is any institutional knowledge held by a single employee approaching retirement age? What happens if that knowledge isn’t passed on? Which of your Millennial or Gen X employees have the capacity to advance to a leadership role? Do you have a formal mentorship program, especially to support Gen Z employees who might be newer to the workforce? What growth options are available outside of title changes? Where can top-performing employees take on more responsibility, or maybe become mentors themselves? Normalize Mental Health Support for All Employees Something worth flagging: less than 60% of Gen Z and Millennial employees rate their mental health as good or very good. Part of this is a generational gap in recognizing symptoms and warning signs, but it’s also worth considering more underlying causes. Gen Z had formative high school and college experiences impacted by the COVID pandemic. Millennials navigated a job market plagued by several recessions and changes over the past 20 years. That’s a big reason why more than 40% of employees in both generations identified work as a major source of stress and anxiety. At the center of this is the “Sandwich Generation” (age range 30-60), who are simultaneously raising or supporting their own children while also caring for their aging parents. Offering comprehensive mental health benefits, normalizing discussions around well-being, and providing access to resources such as counseling and stress management tools can make a significant difference in employee retention and satisfaction. In your business, consider: Where can employees access their benefits and support information on their own? Does your team know what mental health benefits they have access to? Are managers equipped and encouraged to say something if they see an employee who might be struggling? Build a Culture of Continuous Improvement The businesses that manage generational changes well are the ones who handle any change well. A culture of continuous improvement helps businesses build systems, share ownership of the work, and make collaboration and communication core to how the work gets done. While leaders are often charged with selecting and driving changes, a continuous improvement culture empowers employees across the business to raise ideas. From a Baby Boomer manufacturing line-worker with decades of experience, to a Gen Z sales representative who’s spent two years on the phones, the people closest to the problem are best positioned to find impactful solutions. An Employee Experience Committee is one way to create structure for continuous improvement. A cross-functional group of employees, across teams and across generations, can present leadership with ideas for improvement and help implement those changes. READ MORE: What Happens When Employees Help Shape the Work? Some questions to consider here for your business: Is there a clear next step for employees who raise a concern or an idea? Who’s empowered to fix a broken process in your business? Does your team look to a diverse mix of employees for ideas for improvement, or does it lean on the same few voices? Who Can Help You Manage a Multi-Generational Team? The key with all of this: manage the individual, not the team. The work of human resources is how you manage individuals in your organization. Are you providing employees across generations with the tools needed to thrive at work? Through HR consulting services, Employer Services Corporation helps businesses in Buffalo and beyond support diverse workforces and make HR part of their competitive advantage. Contact our team to learn more about how we could help your business.