In The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the title character is born old and progressively gets younger.  In his early life as a physically elderly man, people assume that Benjamin has seen a great deal whereas later in life after experiencing much sadness and adventure, those around his adolescent exterior presume he is naïve.  It is from this essential irony that the movie explores how perceptions of age affect our relationships.

The utility industry is experiencing its own “curious case” at the moment.  While the American workforce as a whole gets older – a trend that may accelerate in the U.S. with the raising of the social security retirement age – many of our utility members report that their workforce is rapidly getting younger, perhaps due to a set of private retirement benefits that allows for more turnover.  In the movie, Benjamin ultimately connects with those who appreciate him as an individual more than an age.  For utility members to seamlessly transition their workforces, so too must they embrace individuals over demographics. 

The specific questions that manifest most frequently from members about a workforce that’s getting younger is: how do we reach them? Should we use social media?  Will they care about our culture or strategy?  And how do we facilitate connections when vast differences of age or experience may not reflect differences in authority or level?  On the flip side, people wonder how do we retain information from departing individuals and inspire them to help those coming in?  Just like the few characters who successfully connected with Benjamin, the answers are concerned less with the communications preferences of Gen X, Y, or Z, but rather the sources of individual emotional connection that will inspire engagement and alignment.  To get there, organizations must first pursue the following:

1)     Identify the sources of shared values with individuals across your workforce: Yes, you have engagement surveys and other data, but all that will tell you is how they react to your construct of what’s valuable.  Many utilities report learning much more just hanging in various break rooms, service trucks, or in the case of a non-utility member, Best Buy, literally setting up a chair in a well-trafficked area to make yourself available for questions and comments.  Those little moments of insight into the values of your workforce will serve as a much more solid foundation for a communications platform than the hippest social media center ever.

2)     Provide a sense of ownership or investment: Those entering the workforce don’t want to simply inherit a set of policies and procedures, they’ll want to make an investment in and take ownership of the organization they are inheriting.  Similarly, those departing will only share what they’ve accrued when they can own that transition of knowledge and experience.  Leading functions are therefore creating more opportunities for interactivity among their workforce to discuss corporate strategy and values; hence, allowing new team members to provide their own ideas of how to align with broader goals while providing veterans the chance to show off their knowledge as more than the manifestation of a staid set of financial reports and corporate strategy documents.  Peer-to-peer recognition platforms have been a particularly potent way to recognize the best of new and old ideas.

The broader point is that age will not tell us what we need to create an impact as communicators. We see a workforce getting younger and we immediately make assumptions about their values and preferences, but The Curious Case of Benjamin Button reminds us that such perceptions can be dangerously wrong.  Those utility companies that begin by listening and asking questions and then creating opportunities for new voices to mix with old will ultimately transition best.  Consider this memorable exchange as you seek to adjust your communications to new workforce dynamics:

Daisy (Benjamin’s ongoing love interest): What’s it like growing younger?
Benjamin Button: Can’t really say, I’m always looking out of my own eyes.

So, utilities, what’s it like growing younger at your organization?

Related CEC Content:

Best Buy’s Employee Listening System

Principles to Drive Participation in Peer-to-Peer Networks