Name: Cultivating Happiness: Building a Workplace Where Every Generation Thrives
Uploaded: 2026-05-06T19:00:54.176Z
Duration: 28 min 24 s
Description: Cultivating Happiness: Building a Workplace Where Every Generation Thrives

Transcript for "Cultivating Happiness: Building a Workplace Where Every Generation Thrives": Welcome to day two of TriNet's National Small Business Week virtual summit. Kicking things off today, we will discuss how to unlock the full potential of a four generation workforce by turning generational differences into your greatest advantage using energizing real world strategies to boost connection, retention, and a culture where every employee feels seen, supported, and inspired. Please look to the right side of your screen and use the chat to say hello to welcome our speakers from TriNet executive director talent acquisition, Sun Pham, director leadership and organizational development, Allison Gorman, and senior organizational development consultant, Sophie Alexandridis. Well, good afternoon or good morning for those who are joining us. We're excited that you're here. But before we get started, let's run through some quick housekeeping notes so this way you can follow along in our conversation and be interactive with us. On the right side of your screen, you'll see a dedicated q and a tab. Please submit your questions there rather than in the chat. We also have colleagues that are monitoring this q and a tab that can help answer the questions directly in case we don't have an opportunity to respond to you via the chat. Additionally, we will be running some polls and asking some questions throughout that process. Please look to your right as well where you see the polls tab that will pop up and for you to answer some of the questions as well too. There will be downloadable resources in the docs tab that you can refer to, and it's located on the right side. And then it's also available on demand at the same time when you use the link when you come back to view it on demand, of this replay or any of the documents that are available to you. Our intent is to make this a really fun, engaging, and interactive conversation. Now in keeping with that mantra, we're gonna start with our questions, and we'd love to hear from you on this particular question is, how many of you are managing teams where the age gap spans between twenty, thirty, or even maybe forty years? So So we're gonna start the poll now, and you're gonna see those three choices, twenty, thirty, or forty years in terms of where your teams are and what the age spans looks like. Okay? So let's give it a second. Let's get that poll up and running, and then give you guys some opportunity to to respond there. Okay? And we're starting to get one or two responses in, which is great. Wow. Alright. This is awesome. Well, guess what, folks? You're not alone. We face it here at TriNet. There's bunch of organizations that face it as well. The workforce in today's environment, there are four generations out there. One called baby boomers, generation x, millennial, and gen z. And if you're running the small and medium businesses, you're navigating this every single day, so don't feel like you're alone. You're in good company. And so that's what our topic today is, to really think about the workforce generation and how you as the small, medium business owners can really make it thrive to your benefit. Okay? Some quick statistics, and we're not gonna drain you a bunch of studies and resources and things like that. I do wanna kinda bring out some notes that might be of interest to you. You know, when you kinda think about the workforce and how it's made up, in today's environment, the baby boomers only makes up about 15% of that workforce, and the millennials, about 36%. Then you have gen x, you know, which is the second largest at 31%. Right? So you can start to see that as the boomers starts to retire, they're decreasing and then exiting the workforce. Your Gen x's in there, and the millennials and Gen z's are close to Hyundai. And over the next, say, five to ten years, the x will start to retire, and your millennials and z's will then occupy the majority of the workforce. So this topic is very timely as you kind of think about your growth strategy, your team, and how to make up that generational gap really is gonna be a competitive advantage for you. Alright? So joining me today, we have Allison and Sophie. Allison has over fifteen years of leadership experience and Sophie represents the next wave of our up and coming top talent in the workplace of innovation. So let's get started with the conversations with them because they are gonna be great partners in terms of giving us their feedback and their information. Alright. So, Allison, I'll start with you. Okay. So we love to talk about generational differences, and there's so much research and study on this topic, but we're not here to promote stereotypes. Generations can give you context, but they don't define people or determine how someone works. Allison, what's one assumption that drives you crazy? What do you actually value at work? Thanks, son. So one assumption that I hear a lot is that experience equals rigidity. So that if you know, if you've been in the workforce longer that you don't value flexibility or you're kind of set in your ways and you don't value new ways of working, but that's hasn't been true for me and for many of the people that I work with. So when I think about what do I value? What do I want? You know, what do a lot of my peers value? It's a couple of things. It's recognition, it's clear structure, and this is something that's really important to me is knowing that my work matters. Right? Having that sense of purpose. You know, for a lot of us, we built our careers in environments where job security wasn't a given. So stability also matters. And if those of us who maybe entered the workforce were early career during the great recession, it, you know, really was formative in our experiences, but that doesn't mean that we're resistant to change. In my experience, when expectations are clear and the why is understood, you know, I found that most people are really open to new ways of work. And so I think that's why it's so important for leaders to not just assume preferences based on age or generation, but to actually talk to their people. Ask them, like, what do they need to do their best work? I love that. And and that's a really critical distinction. What do you need to do your best work? Alright? So I wanna flip that to to Sophie. You know, what do younger generation want that the that might surprise a lot of people? Awesome. Thanks, Sun. I love this question. First, I'll start off with what I think the biggest misconception is. I think the biggest misconception about younger generations is that we're entitled or disloyal, and that just isn't the reality. At least, I'd like to think it isn't. The reality is we are pragmatic. Financial stability absolutely matters, but at the same time, it isn't everything. It's not the only thing that keeps people engaged. And And when you look at some of the engagement data, millennials actually report some of the highest engagement levels around 87%. This challenges the idea that younger generations are disengaged or job hopping out of boredom. When turnover does happen, it can be because people don't see growth, values aren't aligning, or when they just feel invisible. Now as far as what we want, it's clear communication, inclusion, flexibility, and real opportunities to grow. We want mentorship from people like Allison and Son that I'm lucky I get to work with. And we want to learn, but we want to learn in environments where feedback flows both ways. I love that because, you know, you brought up the point about financial stability, growth, you know, and opportunities and then being heard. And I I think those some of those key points really resonates across the different generations and across different workforces and things like that. So, while there might be some perceptions, differences in terms of what people want and all that, but when you get down to some of the basic, you know, elements, it does really there's a connective tissues across the generations in some of those stuff. Right? So so I love that. So, you know, it's not what we want different things, it's that we express and prioritize them differently, right? And you talk about being pragmatic and making it practical. So, you know, we know employee engagement is high across the generations, but also at the same time, we also know there's opportunities not only to continue to drive that engagement, but also to grow and develop folks. Right? So, Allison, from your experience, what are small, medium business leaders missing? So, from my experience, I think it's communication. Right? And so it's not just top down communication. Like, are you, you know, sending stuff down to the top, you know, to your individual contributors? It's, like, real human conversation, real connection. So, in small businesses, you would think, oh, communication's easy. Right? Like, you're small. Like, you can, you know, just talk to each other. But when you're moving so fast, which happens in in like most small businesses, it's easy to assume that everyone knows what's going on. So some people, maybe like baby boomers. Right? They may be okay with minimal feedback, assuming everything's fine, you know, until they're told otherwise. But that's not necessarily true for everyone. I have seen teams actually fall apart because the leaders didn't take time to, you know, acknowledge wins, explain changes, or even ask, you know, simple questions like, how are you doing? Like, really? So you know we put all this together what's the fix? Like what can we do to you know improve this? For me, I find that it's regular check ins and not performative ones but authentic conversations where you use those active listening skills. You listen more than you talk, you know, you listen to understand and not just to respond and you recognize that everybody's not the same, right? So people have different communication styles and preferences, and you acknowledge that and actually take that action forward. Yeah. Absolutely. And I'll add to that too. Transparency is everything for younger workers. But I don't just mean transparency in day to day conversations, but transparency with just about everything. Transparency with benefits, career paths, really the whole employee experience. 48% of Gen z employees actually state that they can easily access support for their benefits related questions, only 48%, as opposed to 77% of baby boomers. This creates frustration. We don't just want perks. We want to understand them, use them, feel supported when we have questions about them. It feels like we're operating often in an age of information overload. So when benefits feel overly complex or too hard to navigate, many people just won't engage. And I think the same thing can be said for career paths. Don't just say there's room to grow. Show what that room to grow looks like. Create clear paths, offer opportunities like shadowing a senior leader. When companies invest in employees development, employees want to invest back into them. Yeah. Absolutely. Development is, you know, so key. And then, you know, kind of going back to your comment, Sophie, on benefits, you know, it is something that employees highly value. You know, when you look at reasons that employees consider new opportunities or want to leave their jobs, Benefits is considered you know a tough reason but you know here's the problem, you know the research has shown that two thirds of employees take advantage of their benefits. That's you know not the best numbers right but only 58% of them you even find that that technology for enrollment, you know, is easy to use. So if you think about what's the opportunity for a small medium business owner, well, you know, what should you you should simplify your benefits comp, communication. You know, there are things that you can do like hosting live q and a sessions, creating one page guides that explain what's available and how to access it, you know, partnering with HR providers who offer real human support and not just a portal. So when people feel supported and using their benefits, they feel cared for, and, you know, that can directly impact happiness and retention. I I love that because some of the bedrock items such as benefits or just trying to be heard or listening, active listening, I think is within the capabilities of our SMB leaders as to how they think about the workforce, how they think about growing developing people. Right? So the old adage is true. Happiness isn't always about having a ping pong table in your office there or providing pizzas every Friday or anything like that, right? It's getting back sometimes looking at some of those basic items, like the benefits really does make a difference, communicating that, and then leaning in and listening to your workforce, you know, across the different generations. Alright. And then making sure that there's clarity, there's recognition, and that they're they're feeling truly supported, you know, really does go a long way. So let's talk a little bit about what can our business leaders, small, medium business leaders, you know, think and what's some solutions that it can look at. So, you know, if you're a small business leaders listening to this and you've got, say, ten, fifty, or even 200 employees spending multiple generational in your workforce there. What do you do Monday morning? How do you start to tackle this topic? So, Sophie, would love to get your ideas and perspective as what's one thing that a leader can do right away? Yeah. So start recognizing people the way they want to be recognized, not the way that you assume they do. Now would be a great time to take it to the chat. Would love to have everyone take a second right in the chat. How do you like to be recognized? And we'll give it a few seconds to see those come in. Okay. We're already starting to see some chatter there. Yeah. I I love it. There's a lot of variety in terms of the way people wanna be recognized out there. This is great. Keep it coming, you know? We can actually take it a step further too. How does your team like to be recognized, if you know? I'm seeing a little bit less chat so far. People were a lot quicker to chat when it was talking about ourselves. I see you. We're seeing variety here too. Alright. And if you don't know how your team likes to be recognized, let's solve that. Something you can do is create a simple system. Ask your people during onboarding or yearly performance reviews that question. How do you like to be recognized? Publicly, privately, with words, opportunities, visibility, so on. We saw a lot of this in the chat. There are a lot of things that motivate people. Yes. Money. We all want to get paid, but that is not the only thing. There's interesting work assignments, a sense of accomplishment, believing in the company's mission. Not everyone is motivated in the same way. I always like to think about recognition like this. Not everyone would want you to publicly sing happy birthday to them at a restaurant. Some might say, oh, I feel so celebrated in this moment. Some might want to leave or hide under the table. The key is knowing the difference and knowing your people. It takes just a few minutes, and it can be very powerful. Yeah. That's so true, Sophie. So what Sophie just described really, you know, gets at the reason why recognition works, because it's personal. Right? And so that same idea idea, carries into how people prefer to work and how they prefer to be supported. So if some employees, like, maybe gen x or elder millennials like myself, are happy to work independently with, minimal supervision, and they gravitate towards perks like flexible schedules and telecommuting where, you know, sometimes you hear that baby boomers function best in more traditional hierarchical environments. So you don't have to make it a one size fits all. Like, you can you can, tailor this to your, you know, your workforce. So offer flexible schedules and remote options, but maintain that structure for those who thrive on it. Right? You can do both. An example is, you know, let people choose their core hours. So some people may wanna start at 7AM, right, and finish early. You know, if you live in the Atlanta Metro, maybe beat traffic home. Right, son? But others, they do their best work later in the day. So as long as the work gets done and collaboration happens, you know, give people autonomy over their time. It can make a huge difference. And that's how you build trust and happiness across the generations, across different people and across different working styles. I love that, and it really resonates with me. Right? You know? Because you really think about it. Leaders have to really meet their team and their colleagues, where they're at and what they value. Right. And then based upon some of the tips that you guys have provided is, you know, leaning in, listening and really asking those questions is, you know, what do you value? You know, what can we do to kind of really reinforce that and ensure that we value you being here as one of our colleagues, right? And which kind of really segues to, you know, you know, for those colleagues and our teammates there, professional development is a big topic. It's things that we always think about. So that came up for both of you. So so, Sophie, let's talk a little bit about professional development. Yeah. I think an effective way to support professional development is through mentorship, but not just the traditional one directional kind of mentorship. Instead, a a more reciprocal two way approach, that kind tends to be more impactful. As we're talking about now, members of different generations and experience levels bring different strengths and perspectives, and setting up a two way mentorship creates space for each person to share what they uniquely bring to the table. Now that that type of mentorship helps break down silos, builds mutual respect, and it reinforces that idea that everyone, all of us have something to teach and all of us have something to learn. Yeah. I completely agree. So mentorship, it works really well. And, you know, I'll add that for for professional development to truly work for it to be successful, leaders have got to know their people. Right? Can't just generalize off generation. You'll see that, you know, we can always come back to that, like, leaders talking to the people and getting to know them. So that means having, you know, ongoing conversations, like, with your your team about their goals or aspirations. And something a tool that we utilize that I found very helpful throughout my career is making sure that everyone has some form of an individual development plan. So we call it IDP for short. You know, it doesn't have to be complex. It can be really simple. So I think this would be a great opportunity, Son, for us to to go back to pulling the audience. So I would like to to put up a poll to see how many of you as, leaders have employees who have an individual development plan currently. So I'll give you a second to pull that up and respond. I love that. And as a reminder, to see that poll, look on your right of your screen. You should see the poll opening up. So please answer that question. How many of you have IDPs with you know, for your employees? Alright. So we see it coming in. So it looks like there are several of you who this will be, you know, a tip or trick that you'll be able to take back, into your world, and, you create this opportunity for your your teams to, you know, be engaged with an IDP. So, you know, to kinda move forward when you understand what that that someone wants to grow, right, and how they want to grow, you can actually help them find opportunities. So that's the purpose of that IDP. It allows you to communicate with them and find opportunities, projects, experiences that really move them in a forward direction. And so when development stops feeling like this kind of abstract, you know, construct out there and starts feeling real, that's when you're just gonna get there's there's great impacts on your workforce. Yep. I love that. And, you know, and then these are great practical and doable actions, which really doesn't, you know, require a lot of investment to do so. Right? We know culture and purpose also drives some of that engagement, some of that happiness. So, Sophie, love to hear from a Gen z, you know. Yeah. Son, like you said, you will often hear Gen z talk about wanting fulfillment and a sense of purpose at work. But, honestly, I think it's something most people want regardless of generation. We all want to understand that what we're doing really matters. But for many roles, it's not always super obvious how your day to day work, your your task lists connects to impact. That's where leaders come in. Leaders can make purpose more visible, share customer success stories in team meetings, celebrate milestones, both big and small, help people see how their work connects to a larger mission, and that will boost that sense of purpose. Yeah. And, you know, when you talk about purpose, you know, purpose also shows up in how companies live their their values. And so values are something that, you know, I spend so much time talking about, you know, working in leadership development. And I feel that, you know, if your if your company, if it supports a cause, involve your team. You know, let them contribute to ideas, you know, volunteering together. You know, TriNet does a wonderful job with that, and then you can actually see the impact. So, it's kind of funny because we we talk about this quite a lot, you know, Sophie and I, but, you know, purpose isn't, you know, the poster on the wall. Right? It's not the motivational poster. It's something that you build together through consistent actions and not just statements. Right? It's so much more than just the words. It's how do you live it day to day. I love that. And and we've covered a lot so far. So just as a quick synopsis of some key takeaways, we've covered it like communication, flexibility, mentorship, benefits, purpose. These are some of the key items that really does drive happiness and also drive that cohesiveness across the multigenerational workforce that you have there. Alright. So, Allison, what happens when a SMB gets this right? So when they get this right, everything changes. You stop having nutrition problems. You stop losing great people. You build a team that's resilient. They're innovative, they're genuinely excited to show up. So you're not gonna have a team that's showing up on Mondays who just experienced the Sunday scaries, if you're familiar with that concept. So I've seen small businesses thrive because they've built cultures that are grounded in mutual respect, continuous learning, like, all of these good things. You know, it's places where people with different backgrounds, with different levels of experience and perspectives, they can learn from each other and work well together. So for me, you know, the difference between a good workplace and a great one, it's not just budget or perks. Although, we all know I love a good pizza party, and Sun, provides candy to me all the time. And it does make me feel, you know, seen and valued. So that's something that you really need to think on. Right? You know? So people feel seen. They feel valued. They empowered to do their best work. That's something that every small medium business can create. Absolutely, Allison. I'll add to this. The future of work is multi generational by default. So you can resist it, which Allison's son, I don't think any of us recommend anyone does. Or you can harness it. When you bring together the wisdom of experience and the energy of fresh perspectives, you get solutions that you would never find in an echo chamber. You get creativity, resilience, and a workplace where happiness isn't an accident, it's built into the culture every day. And if there's one common theme across everything we've talked about today, it's that people are unique regardless of their generation. And when leaders take the time to truly get to know their people and shape experiences around what matters to them, people are more likely to feel supported, engaged, and genuinely happy at work. So actions start small. Don't try to do every single thing we talked about all on day one. Pick one thing from today. Ask your team what they need. Listen, act, repeat. You will be amazed at what starts to shift. I love that, and it gets back to your earlier point about being pragmatic. Doesn't it, Sophie? I tried. Yeah. And it is. You know? And then we're gonna bring this full circle here. Cultivating happiness, which is the topic of of this discussion, it isn't a program, it's a practice. And there are direct correlations of business benefits when you cultivate happiness across a multi generational workforce there, too. Right? So, you know, and then, you know, kind of picking up on some of the key themes is like seeing your people as individuals, not demographics. You know, it's creating a space for everyone to contribute and grow, feeling value that they belong. You know, a thriving cross generational team helps drive your business growth. And, you know, the studies have shown that, right, to what Allison has said earlier. You have less attrition, you have more engagement, you have more productivity. You know? So, those are things that really makes us excited when we kind of think about what are all the different levers that we can drive and what we can put into practice to really help, you know, leaders, small business leaders, to really think about this topic, harness that power that Sophie has talked about, and really grow their business. Alright. Sophie, Allison, thank you so much for spending time with us today and providing your insights. While we are all in different demographics of that, cross multigenerational, I think we're starting to do the right thing to kind of drive that happiness and really harness our power collectively as a team. So, I do want to say thank you for that. And then, you know, it's really good insight. And I'm sure that our business leaders that are viewing this and then are joining us, you know, really would take this to heart. And then, you know, it is some of the, I would say, simple things. It doesn't take a lot of heavy investment to do to really start thinking about this topic and really getting out there and creating that happiness for your workforce across the different generations. So having said that, thank you so much for your time, everybody. We wish you well. Have a great rest of your day, and enjoy, the rest of the week. Take care.