Workforce diversity brings boom not gloom

by Jean Lowrie-Chin

Excerpt from Jamaica Observer column published Monday 20 October 2017

The longer you are in business the more you value your human resource personnel. With their expertise in recruitment, evaluation, mediation and counselling, they can take a great deal of credit for the smooth running of organizations. Therefore, I was honoured to have been asked to make a presentation to the 37th Conference of the Human Resource Management Association of Jamaica last week. Their theme was "Align people and processes for growth" while my topic focused on the stereotypes surrounding mature-age workers also known as "baby boomers". 

As our agency PROComm celebrates its 39th anniversary this year, we can look back and say that the mix of Boomer, Gen X, Y and Z in our personnel has been to our benefit. We should bear in mind that the foundations of this digital age were created by Boomers and we are still seeing these pioneers guiding the younger generation in the best use of this education, information and marketing windfall.

We should note that with the 60+ age cohort showing significant increase between 2013 and 2016, there are now over 350,000 Jamaicans over the age of 60. It is noteworthy that of the 1,216,200 employed persons, 66,100 are over the age of 65, described as the most significant increase per capita since 2016. With organizations taking a closer look at their budgets, outsourcing has become a great alternative to hiring of full-time staff.  This provides new opportunities for retirees.

We have found that our more mature team members bring to the table:

- a deeper understanding of business processes

- solid ethics based on a more traditional, spiritual upbringing

- discipline and social ethics

- networking having been involved in various organizations, e.g.

    educational, church and civic organizations.

Our younger team members bring

- energy and enthusiasm

- because they have grown up in the digital age, they have a very strong grasp of the

   programmes and are quick studies

- they are independent thinkers

- because schools and universities require community service as part of the students'

   development, they are willing volunteers in our outreach programmes.

Having served two of Jamaica's oldest companies, the Gleaner and J. Wray and Nephew Limited, we have seen first-hand the magic that can happen when diverse team members have strong and visionary leadership.

In 1984 we were co-creators and producers of Flair magazine for the first three years of its existence. We worked closely with Senator Hector Wynter, then the Editor-in-Chief and the young members of the team in Editorial and Production.  We observed that under the leadership of Chairman Oliver Clarke the newspaper embraced the digital revolution.  We created the content for Flair on floppy discs in our office, took them down to the Gleaner to have them uploaded.

The Gleaner Company then merged with the RJR Group, another company for which we worked and so we saw two brilliant executives, Oliver Clarke and Lester Spaulding, whose passing we mourn, joining forces to create this powerful media group. Their inspired succession planning saw the emergence of two outstanding senior executives, Christopher Barnes and Gary Allen.

Wray & Nephew, led by William McConnell for several decades was already revolutionising its processes in the 80s and we remember senior executive Rooney Chambers as a tech whiz. With their shining Appleton brand and cutting-edge systems, they attracted the Italian multi-national Campari and their respected senior executive Clement 'Jimmy' Lawrence, now Chairs the company. We see the posts from their young managers, commuting regularly between Jamaica and Italy.

Clearly the collaboration of more mature and younger employees is the recipe for boom, not gloom. In these times mentorship is a two-way street and the only people who will face gloom are those "know it alls" who feel that they have arrived and that there is nothing more that they can learn. To manage this combination of team members requires strong and informed leadership.