Managing a diverse workforce has always been a challenge but it’s interesting to see research from Leadership Management Australasia (LMA) pick up on a specific issue currently facing businesses across Australia – managing Baby Boomers.

According to the LMA’s survey, large numbers from all generations don’t want to work with, or report to Baby Boomers in the future – a finding that threatens to rock workplace stability.

Given that Baby Boomers will continue to occupy senior management roles for some time it’s an issue that needs to be taken seriously by all organisations.  This is particularly so for small businesses where tensions in the workplace can have a huge negative impact on enterprise productivity.

In our experience, communication and agreement over a common goal is crucial in helping tackle this issue.

Gen Ys and Baby Boomers, for instance, may have conflicting ways of approaching work but if you can identify areas of shared ground there’s no reason the generations can’t work well together.  Easier said than done you might think but it’s far from impossible – especially if you’ve got a culture that encourages open and frank discussions between employees.  That’s because the only real way to successfully manage a company made up of multiple generations is to encourage  employees to learn from each other, identify similarities and work around differences.

By addressing the generation gap head-on organisations can not only avoid the negative fall-out caused by generation gaps but actually use those gaps to their advantage by encouraging employees to actively embrace differences in the way we work.