How Singapore firms can maximise organisation learning

Better healthcare and higher rates of education, both good outcomes of Singapore’s developed society status are coming to together to create 2 unique situations, lower birthrates and higher life expectancies. With the prospect of overall longer lives and less young people to maintain the workforce, older people are forced to delay retirement and stay longer in the workforce.

This has created a unique conundrum in the form of a multi-generational workforce faced by Learning and Development (L&D) professionals looking to manage the learning needs of their organisations.

Managing diverse work groups is one of the most difficult and pressing challenges in modern organizations. The problems of such a conundrum are real: individual differences are magnified, which hold the potential for dysfunctional dyads and teams, disagreement or even conflict.

However, the converse can also be true, that the inherent differences and diversity in such a workforce is the antithesis of groupthink and conformity. This brings about varied ideas and differing perspectives.

Another argument for such diversity, is that of efficiency. A diverse workforce can afford a better use of knowledge and skills since employees can be deployed to where they are most effective. Diversity, not just in terms of age, is also an important dimension in many firm’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policies.

Effectively managing a multi-generational workforce thus becomes imperative. Older workers, who now figure often in organisations in developed economies, must be given special attention. L&D practitioners must seek ways to harvest their knowledge and skills and engage the older workers by providing them with work that ensures that they are gainfully employed, and at the same time integrating them with the rest of the workforce to create synergies and new knowledge.

It can be said that older workers are willing and able to take on responsibilities in work situations, and that they desire to remain in the labour force to make meaningful contributions. Work also offers opportunities for psychological growth and social relationships even for older workers. The humanist view of the need for self-actualisation and growth as espoused by Abraham Maslow, the famous American psychologist who came up with the Hierachy of Needs that is in every Management textbook, does not seem to diminish with age.

However does desire and motivation lead to performance? Can you really teach old dogs new tricks? Distasteful ageist connotations aside, L&D must consider the practical implications of such a dilemma. Research largely agrees that cognitive abilities do decline with age, which makes it difficult for older adults to acquire novel skills.

As we move away from the performance in learning and training tasks to actual job performance, what was also found that was heartening was that older adults exhibited stable performance in jobs that required only “maintenance” instead of incremental performance.

Some research conversely shows age in fact becomes an advantage - older workers can actually move away from “maintenance” kinds of work. Work experience, it was found, was positively related to job performance and job knowledge. This may be the workings of work related tacit knowledge that only comes with time and experience on the job.

To better the performance of older workers and harness their abilities, L&D practitioners would do well to heed the following:

To circumvent cognitive decline, draw on experience for learning
Older workers possess a wealth of experiences. These experiences are acquired through organisational or occupational situations that they have encountered throughout their tenure. These experiences can be thought of as schema. Schema is a well organised framework of past reactions or experiences which operate unconsciously in the mind.

Schema, which can be presumed to exist greatly in individuals with large and varied life and work experiences, can be usefully invoked in learning situations. New information can be quickly assimilated into existing forms of generic knowledge or experiences such that “new” knowledge becomes no longer completely “new”.

Schema can also assist the older individual in selecting from a repertoire of strategies used to learn similar knowledge or skills in the past and apply a suitable one in the present learning situation. L&D practitioners should thus employ instructional methodologies that take advantage of older adult workers’ vast amounts of schemata or prior experiences when designing developmental programmes.

Drawing on experience for knowledge creation
Tacit knowledge is gleaned from work experience. Older adult workers with vast occupational or organizational experience would have accumulated such important knowledge. L&D practitioners must ensure older, experienced members of the organization interact with the younger, more technically savvy members to produce new knowledge.

By interaction, knowledge from both parties can be integrated to develop new and novel knowledge. This must happen regularly, while at the same time avoiding generational differences that cause friction, mistrust and ultimately prevent effective teamwork and collaboration.

One of the more effective ways suggested to bridge the generational gap would be through Reverse Intergenerational Learning (RIL). This concept is borne out of reverse mentoring, which is the process where in which a younger employee coaches a more senior (often older, colleague) in the knowledge of Information Technology (I.T).

RIL encompasses a wider base of knowledge sharing and coaching, not just in the area of I.T. Successful implementation of RIL would promote greater camaraderie and trust among the different generational members of the organization, which again enhances the knowledge creation process.