Here is an excerpt from an article written by David Hannah and Jeffrey Yip for MIT Sloan Management Review. To read the complete article, check out others, sign up for email alerts, and obtain subscription information, please click here.
Illustration Credit: Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images
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Universities have emeritus positions. Businesses can benefit from them too.
Imagine a world where organizations don’t just ask, “How do we attract young talent?” but also, “What do people who’ve managed multiple economic cycles think?”
What if we thought of older workers as being in a distinct career stage, where their perspectives and continuity were recognized as especially valuable?
Organizations that embrace this mindset not only tap into intergenerational wisdom but also realize the benefits of employees who are living longer than previous generations. According to the World Health Organization, the proportion of the world’s population over the age of 60 is on course to grow from 12% to 22% between 2015 and 2050. Many of those people are choosing to stay involved in their fields beyond retirement age.
Leaders who have older workers on their teams have been offered advice on issues such as bringing long-tenured employees up to speed on new technologies and navigating generational differences in preferred management styles. While this guidance is valuable, it presents a limited view of older workers that’s largely focused on mitigating the downsides of an aging workforce. It does not explain how organizations can capitalize on these employees’ unique skill sets.
We encourage leaders to focus on the upsides instead. Our work has explored the organizational dynamics of older workers, with a particular emphasis on a subset who can be regarded with the honorific of “elder” because of their learned wisdom and continued high capacity to contribute. To understand the nuances of their impact, we began reviewing research on how older individuals contribute to human social groups and devised some preliminary categories of contributions. We then identified contemporary organizational elders and refined our categories based on this evidence of real-life eldership. These analyses revealed four distinct roles that elders take on: steward, ambassador, futurist, and catalyst.
What Makes an Elder?
Elder is a term with a rich history. In indigenous cultures, elders have historical knowledge of the culture and practices of their communities. In religious settings, elders are experts in the understanding and application of theological doctrines. Within business organizations and the leadership world more broadly, elders are individuals who have accumulated industry know-how, familiarity with change, and experience in making value judgments. They have achieved mastery of certain knowledge and skills.
A compelling example is the global organization.
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Here is a direct link to the complete article.
David Hannah is the SFU Beedie Professor in Business at Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business. Jeffrey Yip is an associate professor of management at the Beedie School of Business.