Chief People Officer shares solutions on how to utilise employee expertise
Many businesses are dealing with a growing multi-generational workforce, which brings challenges and opportunities for how organisations can engage their employees.
For the first time ever, Traditionalists and Baby Boomers, born between 1925 and 1964, are working side by side with Generation Z and soon, Generation Alpha – born after 2000.
With each generation having different preferences and expectations when it comes to the world of work, HR leaders must now focus on how to engage the different generations and how they respond to change.
While this may be new to some, at Bunnings - one of Australia's biggest employers with more than 55,000 team members across the country - has been managing a multi-generational workforce for years, partly due to former tradespeople taking up roles with the retailer.
Bunnings Chief People Officer, Damian Zahra, says this provides a unique opportunity for the business.
“People who have worked for many years bring something extremely valuable to our business – wisdom and life experience. This is something our younger workers can benefit from enormously," Zahra told HRD.
“Our mature workers have seen economic cycles, geopolitical tensions, they’ve been able to navigate a plethora of challenges. We use this to reverse-mentor our staff, in a way – it creates a two-way conversation.”
This is done through a ‘mini community’ of people across Australia supporting one another.
“You’ve got young helping old, old helping young. There are things to do with technology that a certain portion of our workforce can handle – there are other skills that the more mature employee can assist with.”
Having a wide range of ages in a workforce, Zahra underscored, helps create, uphold, and maintain a positive organisational culture as well as solve customer problems.
HR strategies to benefit a multi-generational workforce
From a strategic standpoint, having a multi-generational workforce is beneficial in helping to identify and deal with key stakeholder issues.
“Having that perspective of life experience or previous roles, you can help uphold key business values – ultimately, how can we make the customer experience better,” Zahra said.
The same can be said for when change management programs are rolled out.
“Different people respond to change differently, so when we’re clear as to why something has been done, we are able to take our team along on that journey. It can be mutually beneficial if you have that sort of workplace demographic because it holds you accountable,” Zahra said.
This isn’t easy, though. To maximise the benefit of a multigenerational workforce, agencies need to actively target the aspects of work and work design that are important to each generation, the Australian Public Service Commission warns.
“When older employees retire, they take with them their years of knowledge and skills, which cannot be immediately replaced by recruiting new employees,” the Commission adds.
Workforce collaboration as a key business driver
Ensuring an engaged workforce, Zahra noted, is also key in driving greater commercial success, especially with HR having a greater stake in business decisions.
“HR has a much greater focus on businesses delivering on their goals and transforming customer experience. Gone are the days of focusing merely on compliance – it’s about driving change through capabilities of people.”
In addition, growing individuals into leadership positions is another aspect of the company’s strategy to grow.
The company’s ‘Future Leaders’ program helps employees move to having greater strategic oversight.
“Whether you’re young or old, we ensure you have the stability to progress – and we’re seeing increases in retention, engagement and customer satisfaction as a result,” Zahra said.
“When you do have that maturity around some of those big decisions that individuals make, it can actually work for the benefit of the business.”
These programs also have real, tangible benefits when it comes to meeting business goals, too.
“Diversity around the decision-making table sparks new ideas and unlocks opportunities we might not otherwise see,” Zahra concluded.
