Intergenerational Strategies for Establishing Sustainable Work Environments

Abstract

Nowadays, attention to intergenerational relationships in the workplace is important due to the increasing multi-generational profile of the workforce in many aging societies. Consequently, we describe some creative strategies for structuring multi-generational workplaces in ways that capitalize on each generation’s strengths and address their respective challenges through facilitating intended and planned intergenerational interactions and relationships. We suggest that age-adaptive and age-advantaged strategies must be understood as steps in the quest to build sustainable social relationships across generations in the workplace. The specific focus of this chapter is to draw attention to some of the most promising formats and models of intergenerational programs in the workplace. We place particular emphasis on tools and techniques for promoting intergenerational learning and facilitating relationships in the context of working to create generationally inclusive workplaces. This chapter posits that approaching the workplace through a generational lens means recognizing that generational differences and similarities are a valid, important, and enriching form of diversity whose main feature is their time-bound character. Moreover, it is the fact that generational consciousness may arise (because of chronology and genealogy) that makes the concept of generation an interesting tool in organizational and workplace management.