The importance of communicating across generations

Good communication is vital to ensuring your employees are happy and engaged with your business. And although no employee is the same, there are some similarities across generations.

With the default retirement age removed in 2011 and people generally living longer, many employees are working past their ‘traditional’ retirement age. This has resulted in an increase for many employers of multiple generations working for them at one time, which can make communicating to everyone challenging. Each generation has its own views on how they would like to be communicated with. Baby Boomers tend to prefer face to face communication whilst Generation Z may prefer a more digital approach.

Technology also plays a huge part in the way we communicate today. And with the working environments frequently changing, its important employer communications are reaching all of your employees. Here are our top reasons why we think it’s important to ensure you are communicating across the generations:

Improve and maintain good working relationships

Good communication between mangers and their teams is important for any business. When a manager is able to communicate to everyone, it not only makes everyone feel valued it improves motivation and increases productivity too. Whether it’s from the board, or between employees, good working relationships start with good communication and reaching every generation is key.

To ensure your communications reaches everyone

No matter if you’re communicating a company update, details about employee benefits or an upcoming social event, it’s important to ensure your communication reaches all of your employees. From face-to-face group meetings or one to ones, through to email or internal intranet sites, employees should be able to access information in a way that suits them.

Create one workforce

It’s likely that you will have different age groups working across your business and when they all come together it makes for a better workplace culture. From your more experienced employees who can share their wealth of knowledge through to those who might be newer and can bring some fresh ideas to your organisation, bringing them all together through good communication will help create one excellent workforce.

So, before you send your next piece of communication to your employees, stop and think about if it will reach and engage your entire business.

There are many reasons why communicating across the generations is important in maintaining a happy workforce. There are also many methods which can help you ensure you are achieving this. If you are unsure on where to start, download our latest ebook 5 top tips to maximise employee engagement in a digital world.

You can also find out more about our benefits communications, here.

Secondsight is a trading name of Foster Denovo Limited, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

Information correct as of 07/05/2021