Imagine the following situation: Your boss has called you and your more experienced colleague into his office to give you feedback on your latest project. He gives you both some general feedback on your presentation, but then he asks your colleague to wait outside the office for a moment. You're a little confused that you and your colleague are being separated, but the reality is that your boss knows how to give effective feedback.
Organizations today are facing an aging workforce, which means the gap between older and younger employees is becoming more apparent, and it's a factor you as a leader need to take into account.
Research has shown that different age groups in an organization need different approaches when it comes to receiving feedback. It's important as a leader to understand these changes if you want to attract, recruit, satisfy and retain your employees of all ages, but also if you want to manage their performance effectively. In the context of the changing workforce, two factors; feedback and SST, have become more important than ever.
Whatis feedback and SST?
Let's first take a look at feedback. The definition of feedback is: "feedback is a term used to refer to information provided by a representative (e.g. a teacher, a peer, from a book, parents, yourself, or an experience) regarding aspects of one's performance or understanding"(http://www.columbia.edu/~mvp19/ETF/Feedback.pdf)
In the context of the changing workforce, we also need to look at another important factor called SST. SST (Socioemotional Selectivity Theory) can best be defined as "social-emotional selectivity theory argues that as humans become increasingly aware of the limitations of the future, we become increasingly motivated to act more selectively."(https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2190/1abl-9be5-m0x2-lr9v)
Whatis the difference between younger and older employees?
Socialawareness and usefulness have proven to be highly relevant parameters when talking about SST and feedback because research has shown that older employees have higher levels of both of these parameters than younger employees. Younger adults focus more on skills, knowledge and opportunities to grow. They perceive "time" as time since birth, and therefore they see time as something unlimited. Because of this, their goals tend to be future-oriented, but in a work context, they tend to strive for more knowledge-based learning, career planning, development skills and other abilities they can use in the future.
In contrast to younger employees, older employees view the concept of "time" as time left in life, and therefore time is something that is limited for this workforce. The older employee group tends to be more present-oriented, rather than future-oriented like their younger counterparts. Their purpose is to regulate their emotions in a positive direction and to strive for positive social relationships with other people.
In addition, research shows that older employees are more collaborative and less competitive than their younger counterparts. In addition, older employees also show that they are more effectively engaged in the workplace, while younger employees place more emphasis on "job readiness" and opportunities for advancement. This also means that older employees are more sensitive than their younger colleagues due to their social emotional focus.
Feedbackquality
Another important concept when talking about feedback is "feedback quality".How do you ensure that your feedback is of good quality and actionable? What if your boss gave you and your colleagues the same feedback, would you be satisfied? Not in all cases.
Wouldn't you prefer your boss to be specific, detailed, consistent and relevant to your competencies? Feedback is more useful if given in this way because the information value of the feedback is high in terms of helping you improve your performance.
Whatdoes this mean for your business?
We nowknow that older employees place a greater emphasis on social awareness than their younger colleagues. This means you need to be more sensitive when interacting with them. Next, there was a greater positive association between feedback quality and feedback reactions in younger employees than in older employees.
The final thing we learned was that age-related differences in the workforce can explain the different patterns of feedback reactions across older and younger employees. This means you need to consider how to approach your employees when it's time to give feedback.
.png)
