Mature workers provide ‘lived experience’
My youngest daughter’s remote learning work came with a graphic yesterday “Shout out to the old people for graduating high school without Google”.
Why the world today is different from when us ‘older workers’ were beginning our careers, often forgets two important points. First, we didn’t have the same easy access to resources to problem solving – we were made to seek out solutions, think for ourselves, and ask and collaborate with others to find solutions to problems. Second, who developed all the technology that the younger workers use today – yes the older workers.
I think that if at least these two points are acknowledged then that would go a long way to supporting older works as having value and skills that are relevant today. In my industry of helping businesses in distress and crisis, the most successful advisors have lived experience. They have lived and worked through crises and worked in a business under financial distress. This experience gives them a different demeanour, makes them more empathic, and better at evaluating what is really important now.
They also can see the end goal as they have been there, done that. That is not to say that younger persons can’t be successful – it just that the older worker has some attributes that the younger person doesn’t, which is no fault of either person. If there was one thing I think every worker should understand is everyone is different, everyone will bring something different to the table, and this should be acknowledged and celebrated.
How does your business support mature workers?
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Stephen Barnes is a business turnaround and recovery specialist, Board advisor and the principal of management consultancy Byronvale Advisors. He has over 25 years advising clients from new business start-ups to publicly listed companies and across a wide array of industries. He is a crisis manager that prides himself on quickly understanding the client’s business and issues and developing pragmatic solutions to complex problems. He is also the author of ‘Run Your Business Better’. To find out how Stephen can help you run your business better and quickly improve your business performance visit www.byronvaleadvisors.com.
