How can different generations thrive when collaborating around the board table?

23 September 2024 | 7 minute read

For the first time ever, there are now five generations in the workplace - from students and those in their 20s to managers and leaders in their 60s and 70s, plus everyone else in between

According to the authors of a new book, if you want to harness this age diversity for the greater good it requires a conscious effort and a specific focus on collaboration.

‘Five Generations at Work: How We Win Together, For Good’ uses evidence and case studies to show how to use these differences to your advantage in the workplace.

Co-author Patrick Dunne, who also wrote the seminal ‘Boards’, spoke to us about what we, in governance, might learn from the book’s findings.

Firstly Patrick, what made you and co-author Rebecca Robins write the book?

Well, we’re both optimists and we were getting frustrated with what we felt was a sort of lazy, divisive discourse about how different generations behave in the workforce; the idea that ‘boomers’ have stolen the future and that millennials are lazy and so on. We feel there’s a missed opportunity to create businesses that do better or charities and social enterprises that have more impact by getting different generations working more effectively together.

I see it as a real opportunity. Writing the book has taken about six years because we’ve done extensive research across the world. We’re both very fortunate in the nature of our roles that we spend a lot of time internationally and also have interests both in the business world and the social sector. We were focused on the workplace itself and what the current state of play is - who’s doing interesting stuff.

We've got case studies from all over the world from very big organisations such as Mars, Hoffman Laroche and the EU, both the commission and the parliament, to very small organisations, not just in business, but also in the social sector. The case studies reveal what’s happening in organisations that are bringing the best out in the different generations to get them working together most effectively.

We also used AI to scan for examples of people doing interesting things, including what people are saying about the challenges of working together across different generations.

Obviously in education, which I’m quite close to, there has been a multi-generational workforce for a long time. Whether in higher education or in schools, you have this range of perspectives and experiences working together which is actually quite powerful.

So that’s the kernel of it. We took our time and, I hope, have produced something thought-provoking but also something that provides practical tips and tools to help the generations work together more effectively. Our feeling is that if we don't crack this, particularly in some continents, then there's real trouble ahead.

Is it enough just to simply have a diverse age range in an organisation - or do you have to actively take steps to make it work?

It’s definitely not just enough to just have intergenerational diversity. As with gender or race you need to use that diversity through maximising the benefit of the differences.

Most people try to minimise differences but you gain more power if you maximise the benefit of those differences. So, for example, at The EY Foundation, which I chaired until quite recently, we set up a youth advisory board, a form of Next Generation Board. We had the chair and the vice-chair also sitting on the main board and we had members of the youth advisory board on the different board subcommittees too, so the audit and risk or nominations remuneration committee. We rotated the youth advisory board every two years and the value that it brought in terms of different insights and challenges was immense - it even helped us to think through how we communicate things to different audiences.

It also brought legitimacy because a big chunk of the charity’s work is to help young people who are in poverty to get better employment or education and that means speaking to employers. The youth advisory board was able to get those employers to start changing the way they recruited, the language they used and way they described jobs - even the filters they had on their job sites. I think we might have got there as an organisation eventually but it would have taken much longer. There are lots more good examples in the book.

You talked about the lazy stereotypes people might use about the different generations. What’s the alternative?

Yes, so the book is focused on the positive. We spend very little time talking about the divisive debate on intergenerational working because we want to move on from that. If you look at the three main challenges that people have when working across age groups it’s: understanding each other, communicating with each other and maximising the potential of those groups through the difference. By that we mean, how do we maximise the potential individually and also the potential of the team and the organisation.

This morning I was talking to a brilliant young mathematician from Warwick University who’s an expert in AI. The value she can bring to a board is really high - but that’s only if they can understand what she’s saying and, equally, if she understands what the board is saying about its challenges.

For our research, we found over 200 Next Generation Boards and have written about those and how organisations are using those to get to know each other and understand more deeply what they’re saying.

In a nutshell, a Next Generation Board is a future-focused group of people. Often they are younger than the senior executive and board, hence the “nextgen” tag. Yet sometimes they may be multigenerational and “nextgen” because they are focussed on the next generation of the organisation.

We find examples of where organisations have used Next Generation Boards to challenge processes - has a workplace become too process heavy? Is the culture where it needs to be? Are we engaging with customers in the right way?

You can do that through focus groups, but actually this is where a Next Generation Board can really come into its own. At the EY Foundation we had an expression which was that if you’ve got young people at the ‘head’ as well as the ‘heart’ of an organisation, you’re more likely to make better decisions. For us, this has definitely proved to be the case.

We found companies like Alstrom in Finland or Mars - the confectionery giant - doing really interesting things to get multi-generational task forces working together on an issue. Rather than just pick the management or pick a young group, actually mix them up and get them working together so people can appreciate each other’s talents more.

Can Next Generation Boards work in smaller organisations as well?

We’re actually seeing Next Generation Boards in a lot of smaller organisations, and interestingly, in general, a lot of the things that we found to work don’t actually cost a lot of money. It's more of a mindset shift and being open to the idea that differences can prove useful. Younger people may not have had the years of experience for example, but they bring fresh insight and ideas rooted in their own experiences. It’s also good for younger people to realise they have value to bring at this level.

This should be the first book about intergenerational working that’s evidence-based and solutions-focused. There are other books looking at demographics and data, but without the same focus on solutions and collaboration.

The book is only a couple of hundred pages long, unlike ‘Boards’, which is much bigger. The aim is really to jolt people away from lazy narratives and think about how we might use these intergenerational differences for the greater good.

Patrick Dunne is also author of 'Boards', described as 'a practical, realistic, thought-provoking and useful guide to life as a board member. It is split into three areas, Purpose, People and Process reflecting the three key areas of concern for any board'.

We spoke to Patrick about his book Boards on The Hoot back in 2022 - you can read the article here.