The Multi-generational and Aging Workforce : Challenges and Opportunities

The workforce is aging as people live longer and healthier lives, and mandatory retirement has become a relic of the past. Though workforces have always contained both younger and older employees the age range today has expanded, and the generational gap has become more distinct. This book advocates the need for talented employees of all ages as a way to prevent potential skill shortages and considers both the challenges and opportunities that these changes raise for individual organizations. The expert contributors discuss benefits including greater employee diversity with regards to knowledge, skills experience and perspectives, as well as challenges involving potential generational tensions, stereotypes and age biases. They further place an emphasis on initiatives to create generation-friendly workplaces; these involve fostering lifelong learning, tackling age stereotypes and biases, employing reverse mentoring where younger employees mentor older employees, and offering older individuals career options including phased retirement, bridge employment and encore careers. This wide-reaching book will be of use to academics, PhD students, human resource specialists, managers and government policy makers interested in the aging and multigenerational workforce.