Multigenerational Communications: The Case for Shifting from Monologue to Megalogue

In a Webcast presentation on September 23, 2008, two Deloitte Consulting LLP Human Capital professionals discussed the growing need for companies to evolve their corporate communication strategies, and ways that social media can help. More than 470 participants tuned in to the Webcast featuring  Leah Reynolds, specialist leader, Deloitte Consulting LLP and national lead for Generational Change and Total Rewards Communication, and Cydney Roach, senior manager, Deloitte Consulting LLP and national lead for Strategic Communication. The two outlined trends in multigenerational communication and described how companies can expand the conversation to engage current, former and future employees.

The following are the presenters' responses to select questions submitted by participants during the Webcast.

User Questions:

What is the ratio of the different generations in the current workplace in the United States? 
(Reynolds): Veterans/Matures (born before 1946) are about 5 percent of the current work force. Boomers (between 1946 and 1964) are about 45 percent. X-ers (1965–1981) are anywhere from 35 percent to 45 percent. And then Y-ers/Millennials (1982–2000) are gaining ground. They're around 15 percent right now, just having entered the professional work world in the last three to four years.

What's your take on. . .organizations that disable, say, Facebook so that employees can't access it from the workplace?
(Roach): You can't stop technology. It's like a record company trying to stop people from downloading songs and outlawing such entities as Napster. Technology found ways around that kind of blocking. If you try to legislate to, say, stop employees from IMing, you're going to lose them — literally and figuratively.

Do we see the Millennials adapting and learning from the Boomers and X-ers, or are the Boomers and X-ers being forced to adapt to the Millennials?
(Roach): One of the things I've been purporting lately is reverse mentoring. That means you take a Millennial, a "work force superhero" as Leah defined earlier in the presentation, and you match them up with someone more senior who wants to engage in a different way of communicating but doesn’t necessarily come to that naturally. We've tried to set up programs where the more technology-adaptive Millennials are mentoring their executive counterparts in the Boomer and the Mature generations. So far it's not only produced good results for communications but it's also helped open up other channels of communication.

(Reynolds): It really is a two-way street in many respects. What we find when we talk to Y-ers or Millennials who are in the professional work world is that they value the opportunity to be partnered with more mature, experienced workers. These younger professionals are very keen at gaining meaningful experiences at a faster pace than we've been accustomed to with previous generations, so they understand the value of having someone who can share how things are done in the company and how the industry works. In turn, older workers come to value the skills the younger people bring. But it's going to require very different ways of thinking through how we're going to "plug in" young people to our organizations. A couple of our recommendations speak to that, such as empowering young people to influence strategic direction and ideas. That's not something we've done a lot in the 20th century, so it's going to be somewhat counterintuitive for us but absolutely imperative if we're going to adapt our organizations effectively.

How do you handle communicating with multiple generations on the same subject at the same time? Do you do parallel channels? One size fits all?
(Roach): I'm not a big believer in one-size-fits-all. We have multitrack, polyphonic communications plans in most of our very large projects. I don't want to give the impression that we've turned away from traditional stakeholder management driven communications, by any means — that's the backbone of what we do — but it needs to be augmented. So I would use a multichannel approach.

(Reynolds): I agree. More targeted, more customized messages. If you have to prioritize your audiences, focus on your critical work force segments, those that return the most bottom- and top-line value to the enterprise.

What is 'strategic fun'?
(Reynolds): That's one of my favorite sayings. I like to say that there's nothing wrong with making communication fun, and it's possible to use fun in strategic ways — in particular, to get people's attention. That's one of the hardest challenges you face. Once you have their attention, you can engage them, but until then, you're dead in the water.
(Roach): We actually formed an Office of Surprise at Deloitte, which might surprise some of you, since our parent company deals with risk management and audits. But we do have an Office of Surprise, and one of the cool things they did recently was send out an invitation that arrived in a vacuum pack. When you opened the vacuum, it released a button on a device inside with a recorded message inviting you to a meeting, so all of a sudden, people were a lot more interested in attending that meeting! 

Do we see any negative messages in social networking, and how should an organization handle those occurrences?
(Reynolds): The No. 1 thing to remember is that you're not going to be able to control social media — that's not an achievable objective. You do need to know what's going on in the virtual world as it relates to your brand and to your organization. So if you're not regularly doing virtual audits, you could get blindsided by information and perspectives that are out there. If you're a company that's doing something that's environmentally toxic, for instance, and people are out there talking about it, that's technically a negative message. But if it's true, all you can do is try to change your practices and change the belief that you care about those things. You're not going to be able to hide as many things as organizations used to do, and that's a new challenge.

Where do podcasts fit in regarding preferred communication channels?
(Roach): They're an important part of the mix, but I don't think you can rely on them to convey urgent messages. The really important thing to note about podcasts is that they should be produced like radio ads, using sound to convey ideas. Most organizations currently just stick a mic in front of a talking head, and it's "blah, blah, blah." But the most effective ones are written like old radio shows. It could be a dialogue or role play, or using soundworks to convey the meaning or symbolism of something. Remember that really good audio engages your ears in the same way that visuals do in printed material.

Across generations, how effective are town hall meetings?
(Reynolds): The pushback I hear from employees about town halls is that they're a bunch of "PR BS," and they're not really telling us anything. So the effectiveness is going to have more to do with the content than the format — are you presenting meaningful, honest, interactive and useful information.

How do you keep a message from becoming diluted or mis-communicated when relying on social networks?
(Roach): It's much harder to dilute messages that are genuine and authentic. It's much easier to tear apart a message that's coming down from above simply full of HR rhetoric.

IM communication in the workplace has gotten a bad rap because of misuse by some for chatty, non-work-related distractions rather than for true work-related communications. Is that a recurring problem, bias or obstacle you've observed elsewhere? Any advice on overcoming it internally?
(Reynolds): A lot of communication protocols still apply regardless of the mechanism or the medium. You could have the same problem with someone who talks on his or her cell phone too much.

(Roach): Exactly! People say they prefer to communicate face-to-face, but if you spend all your day at the water cooler, management wouldn't like that, either. Everything in appropriate amounts. 

(Reynolds): It's really age-old communication issues just applied to this new mechanism. It goes to perception. Part of the issue is that less tech-savvy, or less social-media-oriented people equate these mechanisms with nonbusiness communication, not recognizing that they can have a legitimate business application.

What recommendations do you have for organizations that tend to shy away from hiring Y-ers or Millennials? How can they prepare for some of the cultural shifts needed to manage a multigenerational work force?
(Reynolds): If an organization is shying away, they're at risk already, and their risk is only going to get greater because they're delaying the work that it's going to take to adapt. A manufacturing employer told me that they had 10,000 employees, but only 500 of them were under the age of 30. A senior member of their HR team pointed this out to her colleagues, saying, "Guys, we hire people that look like us because we don't want to deal with these issues! We're trying to ignore it, we're trying to delay it." To the extent you don't need younger talent or tech savvy people, shy away all you want, but I think your risks are only going to grow.

Related Content:
Archived Webcast:  Multigenerational Communications: The Case for Shifting From Monologue to Megalogue 
Resources:  Start a Dialogue: Communicating to the Generations
Article:  Gen Y-ers, Baby Boomers & Technology: Worlds Apart?
Overview:  Human Capital