Lindsey Pollak

The Remix will show other generations how to work best with Millennial leaders and how to successfully integrate Millennial working styles with other generations’ preferences and expectations. 81% of today’s workers say the primary difference between generations in the workplace is communication styles, and 38% find it difficult to communicate with coworkers who are not in their own age group. The Remix will show you how to implement professional training and development into your workplace to help retain Millennials, while making sure employees of all generations continue to learn and gain the most in-demand skills. The Remix will discuss various mentoring opportunities—including co-mentoring, reverse mentoring and micro-mentoring —and teach you how to implement them in your organization.

The best leaders of multigenerational teams are remixers who combine the “classic” and the “new”: Although he didn’t pull off a Super Bowl victory, The LA Rams’ 33-year-old head coach Sean McVay is the youngest head coach in modern NFL history. As 28-year-old Rams punter Johnny Hekker described McVay, “He has a very good balance of knowing when he can just be a 33-year-old amongst his peers and then when he gets in front of the team and has to deliver something really important. As The Washington Post’s Ben Golliver notes, “Saunders says his personal coaching philosophy is centered on confidence-building through ‘positivity, energy and positive reinforcement,’ and his team comes together, after wins and losses, for what all-star center Karl-Anthony Towns calls ‘family time.’ In another great example of allowing a voice to every employee/player, Golliver also reports that, in one of his first acts as head coach, Saunders instituted a policy in which a different player each day gets to select the team’s music. The best intergenerational leaders are great communicators: Over in the NHL, 33-year-old Jeremy Colliton is making a mark as the head coach of the Chicago Blackhawks.

Taking their place as the new kids on the block are Gen Z, who are joining a workforce where not just the millennials, but Gen Xer and Baby Boomers are still going strong, with an assist from many Traditionalists still working today To explore this phenomenon and provide advice on how to thrive within it, I recently turned in the manuscript for my next book, “ Born approximately from 1922 to 1945; 46 million born in the United States * Baby Boomers: Born approximately from 1946 to 1964; 76 million born in the United States * Generation X: Born approximately from 1965 to 1980; 55 million born in the United States * Millennials (a.k.a. Generation Y): Born approximately from 1981 to 1996; 62 million born in the United States Consider the chart below, from the Pew Research Center, which shows how the workplace has evolved from a three-generation mix when I first started my career in the late 1990s, to the unprecedented five-generation mix that exists today. Today, you never know what generations will be represented in any room you step into—every meeting with clients, new customers or colleagues; every networking event; every recruiting or interview conversation—could include people up to six decades apart in age and work experience.

For example, 77 percent of those surveyed said their employer does not offer environmentally friendly programs; 72 percent said they lack quiet, reflective spaces; and 71 percent reported no access to an onsite health center or wellness programs. I talk a lot about how offering choices is the best way to appeal to the multigenerational workplace, and I believe this is particularly applicable to wellness. In fact the Capital One survey found that an overwhelming 85 percent of employees said that flexible workplace designis important. In fact, nearly 80 percent of employees said that an innovative environment encourages innovation, and 83 percent said that flexible workplace design leads to better ideas.