News: Performance Management
Staff age gaps 'present challenges to business'
21 February 2008
The conflicting work styles and attitudes between employees of different ages significantly hampers productivity, research has revealed.
Research into the multi-generational workplace by the Helen Hamlyn Centre at the Royal College of Art, identified four generations of workers and concluded that the "needs and work-styles of people at each end of the age scale are polarised," reports the HR Director.
Professor Jeremy Myerson, director of the Helen Hamlyn centre, said: "Twenty years ago human resource managers may have paid lip service to issues surrounding increasing age diversity in the work place."
Senior executives now realise that poor management of the different generations in the work place "has a profound impact on their bottom line", she added.
According to the Office for National Statistics, nearly a third of people working in the UK will be over 50 by 2020.
Meanwhile Frances O'Grady, deputy secretary general at the Trades Union Congress, recently claimed that employers often do not recognise the value of staff training.
Management training and development courses may help improve work-relationships between employees.
