Human Truth Podcast | Ep. 04: Generational Differences in the Workplace

Welcome to The Human Truth Podcast where, each episode, we take a closer look at a popular workforce statistic ripped from the headlines and ask: Where’d it come from? Is it true? And why should we care? 

• What are we talking about this episode? An alarming statistic from Deloitte: “70% of organizations say leading multigenerational workforces is important to their short-term success, but only 10% say they are very ready to address this trend.” Only 10%!

• Who’s talking about it? Host Ian Cook is joined by Giselle Kovary, Head of Learning & Enablement at Optimus SBR and a generations-at-work expert, to discuss the generational differences at work and why it’s important that businesses address this challenge.

Resources on Generations at Work mentioned this episode:

• Have Generational Work Styles Changed Since the Pandemic?

• [Survey Report] Everything You Assumed About Gen Z at Work is Wrong

• How to Lead and Engage Millennials in the Workplace

Subscribe to The Human Truth Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts & never miss an episode!

Want to get in touch? Email us at podcast@visier.com

Transcript: 

Announcer: Gen Z is beginning to enter the workforce. If you expect them to be carbon copies of Millennials, you’re in for a surprise. We asked 1000 Gen Zers what they wanted out of work. Download our new report, What Gen Z Workers Really Want at visier.com. It’s the Human Truth podcast from Visier, where each episode we examine a workforce statistic ripped from the headlines and ask, where did it come from? Is it accurate? And why should we care? Gen Z, Gen X, Baby Boomers, Millennials. Do different generations need different things at work, and are managers prepared to manage the newest generation, Gen Z?

Ian Cook: This statistic from Deloitte caught our attention: 70% of organizations say leading multi-generational workforces is important to their business success, but only 10% say they are ready to address this. That’s what we’re digging into today. I’m host Ian Cook, and I’m joined by special guest, Giselle Kovary, a Generations at Work expert and corporate trainer, where today we’re talking about my generation and all the other generations that are working too. I’m joined by someone who knows a lot about this topic. She’s the head of Learning and Enablement at Optimus SBR, and a Generations at Work expert. So thanks for joining us today, Giselle.

Giselle Kovary: Thanks so much for having me.

Ian Cook: Can we start by telling us a bit more about Optimus SBR and what brought you into this work on generations? It is really fascinating work and very timely.

Giselle Kovary: So great to be here. I really appreciate it. I’ve been focused on the area of generational research and understanding generational differences for over 18 years. I started a business called n-gen People Performance and have been focused almost exclusively in that space since 2003, and most recently sold my business to Optimus SBR and have come in as their head of Learning Enablement, and been able to expand the offering that we had at n-gen and connect with the broader solutions that we have here as a management consulting firm and with a much more robust learning enablement practice area. So our generational work will remain. And in fact, we have greater opportunities now to expand that and connect it to bigger solutions.

It’s an area that I’m very, very passionate about, and it’s one that is incredibly timely now. To be frank, I didn’t expect 18 years ago, almost 19 years ago would be in the fall, that when we started this business, that this in fact would still be a topic. But you can see just from that stat that you noted, only 10% of organizations feel that they’re actually prepared to address this issue. And coming out of COVID, and as we return to work, it’s becoming more and more relevant.

Ian Cook: I completely agree with you there, Giselle, as well, that the relevance of it … I’ve been tracking this generational conversation for a long time, and it feels like it’s been around a lot, but the impacts of it in our current frame, with all of the changes to how people are working, the choices they’re making, the dynamics within the labor force that people are experiencing, I think a lot of it comes down to the generations. So let’s just start by laying out the generations. We’ve got four. I think we’ve only got four in the workforce. I did a quick piece of math because I’m that way oriented. Traditionalists would be born before 1946. If they are still working, they are somewhere over 76 years old. I suspect there are still people out there who are in that category, Traditionalists who are still working. I don’t think there’s so many.

Giselle Kovary: Absolutely.  

Ian Cook: But if we go through the four, there’s Baby Boomers, there’s Gen X, there’s Millennials, and Gen Z. Very distinctive elements around those populations. So let’s jump in a little bit. What’s interesting, or what’s significant about each of those four generations that are working?

Giselle Kovary: Well, I think, Ian, you hit the nail on the head. First and foremost is that there’s the four generations, but in fact there’s still the fifth, right? Traditionalists are still in our workplaces. And if they’re not necessarily in a day to day, they’re absolutely in executive teams, on boards, and many, many organizations today still in fact align very much to traditional values and expectations. So it’s for that reason, in fact, that I always speak about all five generations.

And I think that when we look at these age categorizations, it’s really important that we recognize that there’s a couple of things that sort of go into the fine legal print. So Baby Boomers right now are between 58 and 76 years old. Gen Xers are 57 to 42. And then we go down 41 to 27 for the Millennials, and then the Gen Zs are 26 and down to 10 years old.

But what’s important here to note is, I mean, these are significant differences, and we’ll explore those in more detail, I’m sure, in this conversation. But it’s usually less important the year you’re born, right? I’m not sure exactly what year you’re born in. I’m born, I’m a classic Gen Xer. I’m born in the ’70s. But there’s a lot of people that might be born in a particular year, but they don’t align with that mindset. So lots of clients and organizations say all the time, we’ve got 24 year olds and 25 year olds in this business, but they think and act like Traditionalists. They may have come from Traditionalist cultures, Traditionalist background, Traditionalist upbringings. And that’s also important to keep in mind, as we think about this broadly today.

Ian Cook: I love that point, Giselle. I was actually going to riff on it myself. It’s like, whilst we’re making categorizations, often those categorizations are helpful to understand difference. They’re important to understand organizational responses, but it’s really, really hard to say that what’s true of a population is then true of any individual, because I would agree. I certainly meet some of the younger folks who start working with Visier who would come with traditionist values. So maybe that’s the place to, again, get to this next level of detail.

What are some of the differences, if we’re thinking about these generational categories? What is it? Again, we have an infographic on the website which I believe is work you’ve helped us share. It’s on the Visier blog. So folks can go reference that. But what would you say are some of the important differences when thinking about these generational categories?

Giselle Kovary: I think some of the really important differences, again, and we’re always talking about it in a macro, as you said, that replaces the need to understand somebody at the micro level. In our research and our work, we’ve looked at a number of different organizational factors. And I would say there’s three big ones, loyalty work styles, and then the relationship with authority. And so when we look across the different generations, how people perceive their relationship with their employer is fundamentally different, and it’s different because of a number of things. It’s different because of their life defining events. We talk about generations and how the generational differences are created. It’s through people having different experiences during their coming of age period. Generally the researchers agree that’s our first 15 to 16 years of our life that binds us together as a cohort and shapes our worldview. And that’s why typically if we’re born in a particular generation, we can relate to people in that generation, because we experienced things at the same time during our coming of age period.

So when we look at those things, things like loyalty and loyalty to an organization is dramatically different if you are talking to a Gen Z versus talking to a Baby Boomer, Traditionalist. Traditionalist minded people, or many Baby Boomers were raised in the environment, you knew you were going to get one job, maybe one employer for life. Then they said, okay, well that’s maybe not so realistic anymore, not so smart. But Baby Boomers had to deal with a ton of layoffs throughout their careers. It’s a highly competitive marketplace, 78 million Baby Boomers in the U.S. always competing against each other to get a job, to keep a job.

When we think about Gen Xers, they were a much smaller cohort that followed. Again, I’m a classic Gen Xer. We followed that bulge of the Baby Boomers our entire lives. And this is a generation that says I’m not going to be loyal to the organization. I’m going to be loyal to my manager. And why is that? Because that’s the person who’s going to help me get ahead. They’re going to give me the skills I need to put on my resume for my next job. They’re going to make sure that I get on the projects I want to get on to learn the skills I need. And most importantly, going to sign off on my vacation time, which is really critical.

Millennials come in and they say, well, loyalty, okay, well wait a second. And they’re loyal to their pack. They’re loyal to their group, their peer group. They’ve been talking and connecting and sharing and posting and engaging with that peer group every single day, almost all of their lives. And they’re expanding that network all the time. And so they’re loyal to that pack across an organization, and leaders say to me all the time, I can’t believe it, Giselle. I spoke to one person. Next thing you know, everyone knew. Yes. Because they definitely expect that they’re going to be able to have equitable treatment across their pack, and they’re loyal to that, so much so that in fact, I’ve had clients where an entire group of Millennials all quit on the same day. So that’s always shocking.

Ian Cook: Yeah.

Giselle Kovary: And then the Gen-

Ian Cook: Go ahead.

Giselle Kovary: Sorry, go ahead.

Ian Cook: I was going to say, carry on to the Gen Z. Let’s work through the loyalty, and then I’ve got a couple of observations for you, but let’s cover Gen Z as well, because this is great stuff.

Giselle Kovary: Yeah, absolutely. And then we’ve got the Gen Zs. And so this generation, when you think about loyalty, they’re saying, you know what? Yeah, actually, I’m actually probably going to be a little bit more loyal than the Millennials. In fact, it’s been really interesting, and some of the research that we’ve done to find that 85% of the Gen Zs, we surveyed said they want to stay with an employer for a long time, and they don’t believe they need to job hop to get ahead. However, I put an asterisk beside that. However, define a long time, right? To a Gen Z person, it might be three years, four years maybe if we’re lucky. And if you’re talking to a really senior leader, they might think that people are going to be sticking it out for a lot longer than that. But fundamentally across the generations, everyone’s loyal, but they’re going to define that differently, and they’re going to be looking for different things as it relates to their organizational relationship.

Ian Cook: For sure. I really appreciate the way you break this down, because I have sat into and been a party to lots of those conversations where the Boomer leader, their model of what is correct and what’s expected and how people should work is being fundamentally challenged, either by a recruiter. It’s like, well, why won’t you look at this candidate? Well, they’ve changed jobs every three years. I want somebody who’s going to sit in my organization for 10. Well, that might be your expectation, but that’s not realistic anymore.

Or what do you mean you want to be a manager? You’ve only been doing the job for a year. Those kinds of conversations. And I’ll wear my flag. I’m an early Gen X and firmly map to the kind of categories there. So having sat between the Boomers and the Millennials for a long time, just watching the shift and watching the tension in those conversations can lead to some bad decisions, some good decisions. It can lead to a lot of tension. So really appreciate the way you break this down. 

Giselle Kovary: Great. I know, I fully agree. And those things that you’ve heard, I’ve heard thousands of times. And absolutely, there’s a mindset, and when we don’t understand somebody’s perception, their perspective, their approach, we tend naturally to just assume that it’s wrong. That’s fundamentally a bias that we hold as humans. And so it’s often leaders not understanding how different generations view issues like loyalty or their relationship with the organization, and then making a judgment that that person isn’t loyal, they’re not committed or they’re not engaged, when in fact that’s rarely the case.

Ian Cook: Yeah. So let’s jump into some of the stats. When we opened this, 70% of organizations say it’s important, very important. I’m curious about the other 30%, but maybe we’ll cover that later. And yet 10% are only very ready. So what do you think? Has it raised the importance or raised the focus on the generations at this point in time? Is it pandemic related? Is it a longer term trend? Why is it so important to have a grasp on this difference in work right now?

Giselle Kovary: Well, I think that it is long term, as I sort of noted at the beginning. I didn’t think that would be the case, to be honest, but for the last 18, almost 19 years, I’ve been speaking on this topic and working in this, and it is a long term trend because there’s a couple of things that are happening. One is we’re welcoming new generations in. So I don’t know if I’ll still be in the workforce when we have our next generation come in. They’re nine and under right now, but I probably will be. So one is it’s shifting and it’s evolving.

The second is there’s absolutely been a resurgence of a focus on this during COVID. And I think the reason being is that we saw this play out. We saw it play out initially when it came to lockdown and working from home issues. There were just generational differences that were really pronounced in many organizations. Some had to do with life stage. So lots of younger people, no surprise, they were living in smaller homes, they were perhaps having to work from home with a partner as well in a very tiny condo. They didn’t have this large house where they could go to a different place. Lots of younger people feeling incredibly isolated. We’ve read a lot about those issues.

More experienced employees, I don’t like to use the word older, but more experienced in age, some of them really struggled with adapting to using the technology as much as they had to. So this notion and idea that we were now going to have to be on Teams meetings Zoom meetings all the time and adapting that way. So that’s really highlighted it.

And then now as we emerge out of COVID, in fact, there’s even a bigger emphasis around generational differences as we return to work. You’ve got the two different spectrums, right? You’ve got younger employees in many cases are saying, well, I’d like to stay at home, but actually I’m too isolated. I need to get out and get some social time. I want to be in the office, but I want to make sure we’re doing something fun, and executives saying, we expect you to come back in here five days a week. And people saying, no thanks.

Ian Cook: Yeah, some of that has played out in the press in quite fascinating ways. I think for me, the exciting part of COVID, and especially where this generational modeling becomes relevant, something to apply to your business, is that for a long time we had this very much notion of one size fits all HR policy. Fairness was perceived as the same thing for everybody. And my perspective is that has changed dramatically because equity is not doing the same thing for everybody. It’s kind of giving it equal opportunity, equal access, some level of recognition for what that person’s needs are.

So I think that’s one of the things that has changed dramatically for the HR function during COVID, is you can no longer have a single policy. You actually have to recognize life stage, work values, and various other pieces. So interesting to see from your experience, maybe when organizations call you in to help, what happens when businesses don’t manage the generational differences, when they’re they just kind of let the leadership generation dictate how things flow?

Giselle Kovary: Well, it doesn’t usually go well, and that’s why we get called in, because there’s a problem. So we jokingly say whenever … any cocktail party I’m at or any social event and I mention I do this, people will have a hundred stories to share with me. And they’re usually complaining about “young people”. And then I always say, thank you, because otherwise, if there weren’t these issues, then I maybe wouldn’t be busy.

But I think to your point, that first and foremost, when we’ve worked with HR teams and supported them in looking at policies and practices, it absolutely has to be an integrated approach. We have to make sure that we fully understand how to build programs and practices with an organization that are going to target and motivate the five different generational mindsets. Again, keep in mind the mindset. There may be nobody in the organization at 77 years old, but lots of organizations have a traditionalist mindset, and they may attract people with that mindset.

So what happens when they don’t get it right? Well, there’s a lot of problems that can emerge. I would say many of the things that people are concerned with now, they’ve been concerned with for a number of years, but this COVID is put a fire underneath it, and that’s recruitment, retention and engagement. So if we aren’t able to attract diverse talent across the generations, then we have homogeneous thinking. If we are not able to create that kind of work culture that’s sticky for a variety of different people within the organization, then our turnover rate. And we are seeing this happen, this great resignation and the great migration is an indication that all generations see that there’s greater opportunities to move. So to be an employer of choice is critical, and we need to make sure that we are aligning to the expectations and values of this cyber workforce.

And then there’s also human capital risks. We think about really strategically, both in the HR function, the risk function, and in the C-suite and boards that I speak with, they’re looking at human capital risks. What happens when we have a shifting labor market like this? What happens when we don’t have a workforce that can rebound from COVID? Resilience is a big piece that I work within. When we’re trying to look at issues as it relates to employee wellbeing and wellness. Even this sort of new trend that Gen Zs are being attributed to this quiet quitting, if you’ve heard about that.

Ian Cook: Yes, I’ve heard about quiet quitting. Interesting that a behavior that’s been around for a while now gets a label and then gets some quite high profile. I found the whole process of understanding people and just commentary in the press to be, yeah, it’s illuminating because it hasn’t often happened in the past, but a lot of the data we’re seeing, a lot of the impacts people are experiencing are really highlighting just how crucial people are to the process of business. And again, I think that’s something that has raised the profile of generations. So it’s interesting that you mentioned quiet quitting, Giselle. It might be worth just unpacking what that means. From your perspective, what is quiet quitting?

Giselle Kovary: Yeah, it’s an interesting topic, and I think that it isn’t necessarily new, but it’s gotten a new hashtag and it’s got a resurgence. And from what I understand, really essentially it means taking your job a little less seriously in the sense that you’re sort doing what’s expected of you to perform in your role, but you’re not necessarily going above and beyond. So if you’re someone who has the expectation of working a “nine to five”, then you don’t work past five, that if you’re asked to take on additional work and that this is sort of done on a more regular basis, that people are saying, no, that’s not what I want.

I don’t think that this is a particularly helpful trend, but it is one that is being labeled as something that Gen Zs have maybe initiated or run with. Again, I don’t think they initiated it, but it’s just a resurgence of what many people have looked at for a number of years, which is how can we have perhaps some boundaries, and how can we have a good work life balance? But I think there’s some risks with the connotation.

Ian Cook: Yeah, no, absolutely. I think it’s a great description. Interesting phenomenon to understand that we are redefining our relationship with work, and doing so in the media, and doing so constantly. I think it’s interesting times and something that’s important for people to get their head around.

Giselle Kovary: And I think for Gen Zs, when they try to battle some of the stereotypes that have been held about younger employees, and quite frankly, the Millennials got it worse. There was so much millennial bashing for at least a decade. But when younger employees come into a work environment, and if they’re concerned at all about being perceived as people that are “not as committed”, then even adopting something like the term quiet quitting, that’s not going to engender people very much. A senior leadership team will say, what do you mean you’re quiet quitting? As opposed to there could be much better terms that would truly indicate, I think, what people are asking for.

Ian Cook: Well, absolutely. When I hear somebody who shows up as expected, delivers what you’ve asked, and does it without any fuss, it’s like, that’s a solid performer, isn’t it? That’s my definition of a solid performer. So really nicely made point.

Giselle Kovary: Absolutely.

Ian Cook: And building on … I think you went through a really powerful list there on some of the impacts, which puts generations at the heart of HR strategy, if you think about sourcing, recruitment, retention, development, growth of the success of the business. Those are the core work of the HR function. And just building on what you’re saying, Giselle, as well, we’ve been able to research the boomerang process where people leave, are looking for, as you say, that next better work opportunity, sometimes finding that what was presented by this business is not what they expected, and therefore returning. And the number of boomerang employees is pretty high. It was 30% in the data that we looked at inside our own pieces. So there’s some interesting stuff around how analytics can actually help understand the makeup of your population, understand the impacts, understand how you need to adjust certain policies, certain practices based on how the generations are represented in your organization.

Giselle Kovary: Absolutely. And the more that we can get into the analytics, certainly encouraging all business leaders to evaluate their employee engagement scores across generational lines, to look at turnover by generation, to look at high performing teams and see how do they do it well? How are they integrating younger talents? I mean, there’s a number of factors there. I mean, I do a lot of work with early and career talent, and part of that is helping them effectively integrate into the work environment, helping them understand how different generations may perceive them. Gen Zs that I work with globally all the time say thank you, I just didn’t know. I didn’t know that that would be perceived as negatively. They didn’t intend to tick anybody off, but there’s some behaviors that just other generations find curious or different or sometimes annoying.

Ian Cook: No, absolutely.

Giselle Kovary: And they need to know that.

Ian Cook: They do. This is a great place for us to take a break. So we’ll take a break, and we’ll be right back with some more detail about Gen Z.

Announcer: The U.S. is facing a historic labor shortage. Companies are racing to build work environments that will attract Gen Z workers and keep them on the job. What best practices win over these young employees? Find out in our survey of 1000 Gen Z employees. Download our report, What Gen Z Workers Really Want at visier.com to find out. Hint, it’s not what you think.

Ian Cook: So we’re back. I’m Ian Cook, the host of the Human Truth podcast from Visier. And today I’m joined by Giselle Kovary, and we’re discussing how to manage the multi-generational workforce. So we talked a lot about the generations. We talked about the importance and why now, more than ever potentially, is a reason to get your arms around it. I think what would be interesting, especially even for me, is what should people know about Gen Z? What is it that makes them different in the workforce? How do we integrate and tap into this new energetic set of employees?

Giselle Kovary: Well, I think the first word that you used, Ian, is a good one, which is energetic, or the last word you used is energetic, because we often tend to ascribe to the newest entrants into our workplace with creativity and innovation energy. And oftentimes that’s the case. So we conducted Canada’s first national survey on Gen Zs and Gen Zs, and we were pleasantly surprised. We wrote also a white paper on this and we found that lots of organizations were surprised in the sense that overall the Gen Zs are bringing back some more traditional values.

I think part of that’s because they’ve been raised by Gen Xers, but this is a generation where, as I noted, loyalty is important to them, stability and benefits and structure. So 89% of them said they wanted work with benefits and security. Diversity, inclusion is critical for them. Initially in our first survey, it was around 76% of Gen Z said they wanted to live and work in diverse and inclusive communities. We resurveyed during COVID, and that jumped to a hundred percent.

So this is a generation that’s building upon lots of the things that Millennials brought in. So where there’s commonality is the creativity and innovation, the ability to adapt, to be open to change. Both of the youngest generations bring that. But I think where Gen Zs may be a little different is people are saying, and the research is showing that perhaps they have a little bit more realism, a greater understanding of what is expected of them, partially because they’ve had to deal with some more economic challenges earlier in their coming of age period.

Ian Cook: Yeah. I mean, as I said, I’m Gen X, definitely formative years for me were coming into work, which for me was in the UK. I came into work in a recession. I actually started my own business at a university because that was the best option for me. And I think Gen Z, maybe that realism is taking hold for them as they come into certainly very uncertain economic periods. A couple of pieces in the Visier report around what Gen Z workers really want. More than 50% were intending to stay with their employer for more than three years. Does that surprise you, or does that align with your own research?

Giselle Kovary: No, totally aligns. As I had mentioned, I think we had 85% of the Gen Zs that we surveyed said they want to stay with an employer for a long time. And then they’re actually not a generation that has been gravitating towards entrepreneurialism as much as one would expect, as you did, and as I did, Ian, as Gen Xers. I think that was often our only path. This a generation that is looking often for … they may want to work in a startup, but they aren’t necessarily taking the same financial risks as previous generations did.

Ian Cook: Yeah. And what do you think they’re looking for in those three years, because I think it’s one thing to say, oh, I want to stay with an employer for at least three years. I’m not sure it’s the same thing to say, well, I want to do the same job for three years. Do you think that’s a fair distinction?

Giselle Kovary: Oh, a hundred percent. I mean, I think a big piece of this is the fact that their parents are Gen Xers, and as many Gen Xers maybe have worked within an organization for 10 or 15 years, but their parents have said, look, I’ve had six or seven different careers within that same employer. So no, there’s not an expectation that you do the same job.

What are they looking for? Well, they’ve got a very high level of desire for learning. 89% in our study said that they want to find employers that will invest in their own learning and development. So they really possess a growth mindset and not a fixed mindset. So they believe that they should be learning and growing throughout their careers. They are certainly looking for leaders and managers that will engage them and be collaborative, and that’s why a big, big piece in getting this right is supporting leaders in making sure that they have the training, the tools, the techniques in order to engage a multi-generational workforce and keep younger people motivated and engaged through higher levels of delegation, more transparent communication, really being very responsive to their needs.

And then finally, when we think about some of the things that they want, they’re looking for culture, and that’s why coming out of COVID it’s so critical to make sure that there’s an opportunity to collaborate, to learn, have that informal mentoring, which is lost when we’re all sitting at home in our pajamas. We don’t have that opportunity. And Gen Zs tell me all the time, they say some of the things that companies think we want, these big bonuses and gifts and stuff, those are great, but really they want this work/life integration. As I mentioned, they want the learning, they want the culture, and then they still want that compensation and benefits from a stability and structure perspective.

Ian Cook: Oh, I think there’s some really fundamentally interesting and fundamentally useful insights in that range of stats in terms of nowadays it’s less about a career ladder, nowadays it’s less about a predictable steps forward in the job that you’re doing. It’s more about staying relevant with the skills you have, the skills you’re growing, to stay relevant to an employer. I think the pace at which business is changing, we’re seeing it in lots of different places. The notion that you went to university and you used those skills for the 30 years of your career is kind of destroyed. And I think Gen Z probably get it more tangibly than many of us, but that speaks a lot to how employers need to adjust in terms of, well, we’ve got these traditional ladders and you start here and we kind of work you slowly up. I think that model is gone. Yeah.

Giselle Kovary: I would agree. And what we found really fascinating, and it sort of aligns exactly what you’ve said, is that this generation is aware of the fact that they really have to own their own career and their own career development throughout their life. But we looked at what were their top three priorities, and it was interesting because it shifted when we surveyed again in COVID. Their top three was enjoy life, build a great career, and become a better person. And when we surveyed again in COVID times, becoming a better person became in fact the second most important priority. So they want to enjoy life, become a better person and build a great career, and it’s in that order and that priority. And that’s a big awareness piece.

Ian Cook: That sounds like a pretty good prescription for work. I like that. I recognize that. That’s pretty cool. You’ve given us some great ideas on how employers can support Gen Z specifically. So I’m going to wrap things up today and I’m going to thank the audience for listening to today’s episode of the Human Truth podcast. We’ve been talking about how to manage different generations at work. I want to specifically thank our guest, Giselle Kovary, and ask if you have any final thoughts, Giselle. What is the one or two takeaways you think you’d like to leave our audience with?

Giselle Kovary: I think really what I want people to take away from this is that let’s layer on a generational perspective to the work that we do internally as it is. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel, but let’s layer that on to all of our HR practices and all of our people practices. So we think about recruitment, retention, talent management, succession planning, change management, all of the elements. We really want to make sure that we look at the data and then understand how do we adapt our policies, our programs, and our practices to motivate and engage that diverse workforce.

Ian Cook: That’s fantastic advice. Thank you, Giselle. So I’m your host, Ian Cook, and we’ll be back next time discussing another fascinating workforce statistic.

Announcer: Thanks for joining this episode on the Human Truth podcast, presented by Visier. More links and information presented on today’s show are at visier.com/podcast. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. The Human Truth podcast is brought to you by Visier, the global leader in people analytics, whose mission it is to reveal the human truth that helps businesses and employees win together. Today’s episode was produced by Sara Gonzales, with technical production by Gabriel Cava. Grace Shepherd is our assistant producer. Ian Cook is our host. See you next time, and in the meantime, visit us at visier.com/podcast.