3 ways to boost productivity and engagement in a multigenerational workplace
Unprecedented pressure and stress in the disrupted workplace incited by the Covid-19 pandemic caused employee disengagement rates to soar. This escalated with the Great Resignation and Quiet Quitting that followed. All of these negative trends can have devastating effects on your company culture.
Now that the global pandemic has subdued, you may wonder what to do to boost engagement and productivity in a multigenerational workplace and avoid the devastating effects of increased turnover rates.
Challenges and advantages of a multigenerational workplace
Four generations of employees sharing a workplace can be challenging and cause cultural rifts. But a multigenerational workplace can be a fruitful environment for exchanging knowledge and experiences. It’s on you as an insightful leader to make this generational diversity work to your advantage.
You need to know how your employees perceive their work, understand the generational gaps, and find effective ways to bridge them, meeting the needs of all your team members. Bare in mind that Baby Boomers and Gen-X employees may bend into company culture differently from Millennials and Gen-Zs. Try to identify generational and individual strengths and weaknesses and encourage your employees to learn from each other’s experiences.
For example, Baby Boomers can learn heaps about new technologies from their Gen-Z colleagues. While younger employees can follow the lead of their older coworkers when it comes to interpersonal skills and work experience.
If you create a company culture focusing on younger employees, you may drive your older employees to disengagement and vice versa. If you want to create an optimal multigenerational workplace, you need to balance out the needs and requirements of your older and younger employees alike, making the most of their differences.
Give employees feedback whenever you can
If you want to make sure your employees are engaged in their work, you need to check in with them frequently. However, while Millennials may welcome frequent feedback, other employees may be frustrated and stressed because they have had negative experiences with previous employee performance reviews. So how to keep track of your teams performance and provide detailed and objective feedback, useful to your employees?
The answer lies in involving monitoring software for employees in the entire process. This advanced app will give you a detailed overview of employees’ activities during work hours. You’ll see how productive they are while using different apps and tools to complete their tasks.
These real-time, data-based productivity reports will add much-needed objectivity to your feedback, eliminating bias and favoritism. This approach towards employee feedback may change the way some of your employees feel about the entire process, turning feedback into a useful, positive experience.
Work together towards effective solutions
Finding effective solutions to employee disengagement and low productivity requires open communication and collaboration. An outdated top-down leadership style won’t work in this case, and it can be counterproductive causing employees resentment and frustration. If you want to find effective strategies to battle low engagement and productivity you need to involve your employees in the problem-solving process, listening carefully to their complaints and suggestions.
While there is no universal solution to fixing this issue, fostering people-first culture may create trustful relationships with your employees. You can also use employee tracker reports to dive into the core of the problem and see what hinders your employee productivity. Once you identify the causes you can help your employees to be more productive by introducing various time management techniques or limiting distractions.
Provide opportunities for growth
Many employees may get disengaged from their work because they feel stuck in their roles and don’t get incentives for professional and personal development. If you fail to offer professional development opportunities and clear career paths to your employees, you’ll face lower productivity accompanied by higher turnover rates. Most employees now, especially Millenials won’t stay in unsupportive work environments with managers that don’t recognize their need to grow professionally and personally.
Acknowledge your employees’ need for professional development and offer specific training and learning to help them upgrade their skills and become more confident and engaged in their work.
