Planning for Success in the Multigenerational Workplace

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Next year will be the 70th anniversary of the Malaysian accounting firm HC Wong & Chew. Its founder is now 100 years old and has very much retired.

The business, now run by his twin 58-year-old daughters Anna Wong CPA and Agnes Wong CPA, has seen its fair share of changes in technology, business behaviours, accounting standards, societal values and much more.

It is this experience that makes the company strong, but it is the various interpretations of that experience by staff members from different generations that add the real value, Anna and Agnes say.

A few of HC Wong & Chew’s 60 staff members are above the age of 60, and there are a handful more between the ages of 40 and 60. The majority of the staff are between 30 and 40. Then there is another smaller, below-30 group.

It is a typical business shape in 2020 – one that sees 60-somethings rubbing shoulders with 20-year-olds.

As a result of population ageing, increasing competition for talent and erosion of retirement savings by events such as the global financial crisis (GFC) and COVID-19, there are now five generations together in the workplace.

The fact offers great joys and powerful challenges for the staff members and their managers.

HC Wong & Chew was an early adopter of paperless knowledge management solution ProSystem fx Engagement. The platform has helped see the company through the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.

If it wasn’t for the younger contingent within the business, Agnes says, the technology might not have had such a successful implementation.

“They helped demonstrate its value and then assisted everybody else, showing us how to use it,” Agnes says.

“When there are updates,” Anna adds, “we delegate the changes in process to those in the younger generations. We are all computer savvy, but they are the very best with computers, so why not use that talent?”

The real value of technology, and the differences between generations, revealed itself when Anna and Agnes worked with an older staff member who had enormous knowledge and experience, but who insisted on using pen and paper. She would often ask her assistant to enter everything into the computer, meaning the workload was duplicated.

“Success, to me, is having the privilege to be able to give back and contribute to society.” Agnes Wong CPA – 58

That staff member eventually asked the younger ones for their advice and help, and was soon brought up to speed. At the same time, the younger staff members with whom she interacted benefitted from her knowledge.

It proved a valuable point that the benefits and issues that come from the management of multi-generational workforces are not only related to technology.

“The generations certainly help our business,” Anna says, describing the positive impact of a tech-savvy generation in encouraging the adoption of new communication platforms.

“We often communicate using WhatsApp, for example. It means we can get certain information instantly, much faster than by phone and email. The client can take a picture of a document and message it through in real time as they talk.”

Success is about psychological safety

Gavin Freeman, performance psychologist and director of the Business Olympian Group, says the secret ingredient in high-performance, multi-generational workforces is psychological safety – also known as mutual respect.

“The only way to be successful is to develop psychological safety across the generations,” Freeman says. “Everybody must feel safe to be able to communicate in the way that best applies to them. They must also be comfortable to say when things aren’t working well.

“It’s not strictly about culture. It’s more about the individual feeling they’re in a space in which they can contribute to the environment, and that they’re in an environment where people want them to contribute.”

How does a multi-generational team create an environment in which everybody feels valued?

There are two ways to consciously do this, Freeman says. One is to simply ensure a good range of ages within every project team, and then allow the respect to grow organically.

Another is to ensure a broad degree of diversity in physical spaces, in project teams and in departments, and then to openly discuss the reason for that diversity to create a clear and open expectation that all points of view will be sought and listened to.

“If an organisation has a wide range of generations in its workforce, it should err on the side of having a clear process and mechanism to allow it to work,” he says. “Otherwise, you’re running the risk of things going pear-shaped very quickly.

“When people feel they have lost respect, trust and the sense of being valued, they stop speaking out and subtly withdraw. That can have a serious, negative impact on a business.”

Managers must re-educate themselves

Bernadette Smith FCPA, chair of CPA Australia’s Western Australia division’s Public Practice Committee, says she’s the “baby” of the group of partners in her firm, Aspen Corporate. That is because she is 48. The managing director is about 60, and the other two partners are 51.

“They’re over 50, so that’s a pretty big difference,” she laughs.

Recently, as she began working with a broader spread of generations, Smith says she has had to shift her expectations. This is because her younger staff behave differently to the way she did when she was their age.

“I was happy with a desk and a chair, and I knew I just had to get on with the job,” she says. “That has very much changed. There’s an expectation that you’re going to get various flexibilities and benefits immediately, where in the past you had to earn them.”…

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