How to Keep a Five-Generation Workforce Happy

CHRO pro tip: Your people want flexibility and help caring for themselves, their communities, and their loved ones.

Note: This is Part 1 in a two-part series. Stay tuned for Part 2, out later this month.

We’re in an unprecedented moment for people leaders.

“This is the first time in our history in the United States of having five generations at work,” says Larry Callahan, MA, chief people officer at Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) Health, which has more than 22,300 workers across 16 hospitals and more than 750 care locations throughout the state.

For HR leaders, it all signals fresh challenge—and opportunity—for sowing a rich, rewarding experience across a growing spectrum of roles, identities, and life stages. Ahead, find strategies for shaping a flexible experience that can help attract and retain early-career employees (and others).

Today’s workforce encompasses the Silent Generation (generally considered to include those born between 1928 and 1945), Baby Boomers (1946–1964), Generation X (1965–1980), Millennials (1981–1996), and Generation Z (1997–2012).

The ranks are growing on both ends of the spectrum: Nearly two-thirds of employed U.S. adults aged 65 or older worked full-time in 2023, while Gen Z is expected to make up 30% of the workforce by 2030.

“If we live longer and do it well, how do we support our employees and their pursuits, however those may look?” asks Nonnie Shivers, shareholder at labor and employment law firm Ogletree Deakins, where she partners with HR executives as part of the healthcare, employment law, and diversity and inclusion groups, among others.

While people leaders should tailor solutions to their employees’ distinctive needs, Callahan and Shivers cite a growing refrain: The desire for flexibility across myriad dimensions of experience, from ways of collaborating in the workplace to caring for loved ones outside of it.

Put your people at the helm

While generational groupings are unscientific and just one reference point in a person’s lived experience, they can be a helpful lens for viewing the macro forces that help shape people’s collective mindsets and desires at work.

Millennials, for example, are racially and ethnically diverse; are some of the earliest inventors and adopters of social media; and have felt the weight of the Great Recession, 9/11, and school violence. “We know that some of those things have impacted their interest in staying at employers,” Shivers says. “It’s also impacted their desire for work-life balance.”

As employees make more—and more variable—demands of their employers, leaders must balance solutions with business obligations that may sometimes be at odds, she says.

That means getting specific on where the organization can play a role, and where it can’t. “I'm not going to say I'm 100% paternalistic and believe that an organization is supposed to satisfy all your needs,” Callahan says.

At the same time, interrogate “institutional stereotypes and justifications,” on what it takes to succeed, Shivers says. “Optimizing flexibility is key, embracing change, and challenging some of the C-suite beliefs about what creates a strong workforce.”

How should a busy executive figure out where to home in? “Ask people what they want,” Callahan says. “The greatest gift that you can provide someone is your time, your attention, and willingness to listen to them.”

He empowers employees to voice their needs at scale through Lean Six Sigma Green Belt strategies like focus groups, interviews, and questionnaires.

Recently, his team took a pulse on employee experience by launching a pair of surveys: one for HR staff on time allocation and another for key leaders and collaborators on value and effectiveness. “You can do a conjunctive analysis of those different things and determine where you have commonality, where you have differences, where you can transition to, and where you need to transform,” Callahan explains.

On the transformation front, MUSC Health, together with its university counterpart, is planning the organization’s first-ever benefits summit to talk strategy on cultivating a thriving multi-generational workforce. They’re also partnering with a consulting firm to make the shift from standardized benefit offerings to more flexible ones based on external benchmarks for academic medical centers and community hospitals, Callahan says.

To prevent legal trouble when collecting data at scale, leaders should ensure employees know why their input and information is being collected and how it’s being used, Shivers says. The data itself should be “rock solid confidentially” and maintained separately from employment records.

Get flexible

Across industries, younger employees are calling for more flexible and, in some cases surprising, ways of working, from lighter schedules to hourly, non-exempt work, Shivers says.

Though healthcare comes with elevated staffing and scheduling needs compared to many other settings, don’t discount what’s possible with a little ingenuity.

Given widespread challenges in recruiting for key clinical roles, Shivers has seen organizations embrace flexibility in ways once “almost unheard of for the grind of most healthcare professionals.” Things like offering doctors a 32-hour or four-day work schedule or the option to rotate in a clinic rather than a hospital.

To help make it work, consider solutions like expanded telemedicine and temporary staffing agencies, Shivers says. Also look inward: One of her healthcare clients has created a pathway for administrative professionals like receptionists to transition to patient care roles. “They're offering those folks the ability to train up as x-ray technicians,” Shivers says. The organization is seeing multi-year commitments in exchange for bonuses and tuition reimbursement. “They're building their pipeline internally with talent who’s loyal but also exposed to their own system.”

If a full-fledged staffing transformation is beyond reach, consider gaining executive sponsorship for something more finite like a Recharge Week or Day, where parts of the organization take coordinated time off to “truly prioritize mental health as well as physical health and family reconnection,” Shivers says.

It can be a “huge recruiting tool” for workers who are “dubious” of whether flexible or unlimited PTO translates to more time off, she adds.

Beyond workstyles and hours, flexibility can also mean easing onboarding requirements. “We’re seeing a decrease in pre-employment drug testing nationally, even in healthcare,” Shivers says. It’s especially true in states where recreational marijuana use has been legalized. The rationale, she says, is, “We don't want to discount those individuals from becoming our employees as long as they're not impaired at work, which is always going to remain the standard.”

Build connection

Connecting colleagues to each other and the organization is key to keeping them around.

Though Callahan is “a big methodological person,” he also knows not to overthink it when it comes to creating organic opportunities for exchange and connection.

He remembers a specific project at another healthcare organization a while back. He was in an office, working with a junior colleague on design plans for some open space outside a building. He didn’t want to make any final decisions in a vacuum, so at the next shift change, he brought his (reluctant) collaborator to the floor, where the pair conducted an “unscientific survey” on their proposals.

After they’d sourced about 100 opinions, Callahan’s colleague had a revelation: Her design was the most popular. “She was transformed” and eager to share the good news, he recalls, as were the people surveyed. They’d managed to build culture on the fly. “Sometimes we make things too complicated,” Callahan says. Don’t forsake the power of “a simple interaction.”

To formalize connection points, many organizations are acknowledging and uplifting aspects of identity that employees have historically felt the need to keep under wraps in the workplace. For example, Shivers has seen an uptick in dedicated benefits, resources, and affinity groups for neurodiverse and LGBTQ+ colleagues.

Employers seeking to validate their commitments to equity and justice through standards like the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index are rolling out transgender-inclusive care for employees and their dependents, “taking out any potentially unlawful blanket exclusions, and broadening their definitions of medical necessity,” Shivers explains.

Also consider introducing employee groups that bridge, rather than split along, aspects of identity. For example, many organizations are finding success with multi-generational affinity groups and education, Shivers says.

In all cases, prioritize parity and consistent treatment across employee groups, and ensure educational information and documentation is “carefully curated” to challenge harmful stereotypes, rather than inadvertently exacerbating them (and the related legal risks), she says.

Show you care that they care

Increasingly, employees are calling for benefits that help them care for themselves, their loved ones, and their broader community. “There's just so many things that have come to the fore over the last several years, but now we really need to address,” Callahan says.

To respond, organizations are increasing caregiving offerings, and communication around how to use them. “A huge amount of this is about education. And it's about helping people understand what they have,” Callahan says. “How do we provide them with the benefits that would lead to a more satisfying work relationship that would help them also to satisfy their current and future financial needs?”

For earlier-career employees—and others who’d benefit—emerging offerings could look like:

Enhanced reproductive health benefits: These can range from egg freezing to perimenopause and menopause benefits. “That's very much something we see with certain members of our workforce generationally,” Shivers says. “They want to be able to have choice over when their reproductive time frame happens in their life and their careers.” Part 2 will delve deeper into menopause benefits and the ground they’re gaining under The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which took effect last June.

Expanded caregiving definitions and supports: Increasingly, these span relationship types and life stages, Shivers says. For employees who are planning or caring for children, modern benefits range from expanded leave to creative solutions like stork services for pumping breast milk on the go and sick-child care services, reimbursement, or time off. On the flip side, organizations are offering benefits to help employees care for aging loved ones, and expanding bereavement policies to cover people who aren’t immediate family. There’s also an uptick in interspecies support. “Decrease in children, more pets as children, totally get it,” Shivers says. She’s seen employers introduce pet insurance and bring your pet to work policies.

Volunteer time: In recognition of widespread interest in giving back, many organizations are setting aside paid time each year for employees to volunteer for the communities and causes they care about. “It's a big cost lay out potentially, but it could have huge return on investment for employees who are committed to the organization, aligned with the purpose, but also feel like the organization is serving the whole person,” Shivers explains.

Mentorship is another way to enshrine community care as company culture, and it can start with the youngest of employees. MUSC Health’s MHA students have created “this tremendous program of interns and fellows,” Callahan says. “So there's all kinds of alternative ways to contribute, and to have knowledge exchange, to mentor people, to go through some career development.”

With their deep understanding of the interpersonal work that fosters a thriving culture, people leaders are well-positioned to meet this pivotal moment in workforce history—even if they’re not always quick to take the credit. “I don't do a lot of these interviews,” Callahan says. “It's never about me. It's about everybody else and how we make them feel, how we make them understand that they’re valued, and that we couldn't do what we do without them.”

Part 2 of this article will run later this month, offering inspiration and emerging strategy for supporting talent approaching later career stages and retirement.