We asked our WorkingNation Advisory Board to share their thoughts on the most important issues and challenges facing the workforce and the labor market in the coming year.
Marc Freedman is the originator of the encore career idea linking second acts to the greater good, and is the founder and co-CEO of CoGenerate.
Here are his thoughts on The Future of Work 2023.
“There are almost equal numbers of people alive today at every age, from birth to 70 and beyond. According to a report from the Stanford Center on Longevity, “We’re living in the most age-diverse society in human history.”
Will 2023 be the year that we begin to make the most of age diversity in the workplace?
We have a ways to go.
So many workplaces, even industries, are age-segregated. Yet just 8% of organizations now include age diversity as part of their DEI strategy. “Of organizations that do address it,” write the authors of Gentelligence in the Harvard Business Review, “the strategy has often been to simply encourage those of different generations to focus on their similarities or to deny the reality of their differences altogether.”
Much more is needed.
We’ve established that increasing age diversity in the social sector is a win-win. Over the past decade, we’ve matched more than 2,000 seasoned professionals, most from the corporate sector, in paid, part-time assignments with nonprofits to boost capacity and build strong multigenerational teams.
While these Encore Fellows get an introduction to the nonprofit sector, they’re helping their host organizations make the most of the different skills and perspectives every generation brings to the workplace.
In 2023, I hope every employer realizes the importance of new strategies that meet the multigenerational moment – not just to be inclusive but to be competitive.”
