Older Workers and Technology: How They Approach It With a Different Mindset

BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | July 26, 2023

Karen Fleshman is a 54-year-old CEO of a small workshop-facilitation company based in the world’s tech capital, the San Francisco Bay Area. Recently, a potential client approached her about creating some anti-harassment videos, but before they would award her company the contract, they wanted to see a sample. Fleshman’s expertise is content, not tech. To win the job, she would need to deliver both.

“I was like, ‘Oh God, this is not something I can record on my phone,” said Fleshman. “I’m really going to have to work to make this look up to their standards.” 

Video creation and artificial intelligence is new territory for Fleshman—for the project, she’s teaching herself Descript, Loom, StreamYard, and Beautiful.ai—but resourcefulness comes naturally. “I’m not the most technologically proficient person to have walked the planet,” she said. “But I am a very creative person, and I’m also a very strategic person.”

Fleshman is careful to not live down to the stereotypes about people in her age bracket when it comes to technological proficiency. “There is the assumption that I won’t be technologically proficient, so I’m trying to not play into the stereotype that I’m going to ask for help because I’m frustrated,” Fleshman told From Day One. “I try to do what Millennials do and look for a YouTube tutorial.”

Most mid- and late-career workers know the preconceived notions counting against them: bad with tech, slow to learn, resistant to change. A survey by Generation.org found that people 45 and older commonly cite their age as one of the most significant barriers to getting hired. 

If indeed “every company now is a tech company,” like the pundits declare, where does that leave older workers who are especially susceptible to the ageist stereotype that the older you are, the fewer tech skills you have and are capable of learning?

Karen Fleshman, CEO of a workshop-facilitation company in the Bay Area (Photo courtesy of Karen Fleshman; featured photo by Gorodenkoff/iStock by Getty Images)  

In some cases, Gen Zers and Millennials do outperform their older peers when it comes to tech. There’s data to support this. In 2021, the Urban Institute found that, generally, adults aged 50 and older have fewer digital skills than those under age 50, though the gap is not particularly wide. Simple exposure is likely to blame. If Gen Xers wrote their term papers at terminals in the university computer lab, Gen Zers dictated theirs to a phone that autocorrected their spelling and generated perfect MLA citations. 

“People say, ‘I want to hire digital natives because they’re more adaptable and more skilled with tech,’ but I’ve never seen any empirical evidence that that’s true,” said Paul Leonardi, a professor of technology management at UC-Santa Barbara and co-author of The Digital Mindset: What It Really Takes to Thrive in the Age of Data, Algorithms, and AI. Yet in some cases, older workers aren’t given the opportunity to learn new tech skills because it’s assumed they either don’t want to or aren’t capable.  

With the quantity and variety of technology available to the average consumer growing relentlessly, it’s becoming harder for anyone to be a true expert on the innumerable choices at hand. “So many of these technologies are new for everyone, not just the older folks in the workforce,” said Loren Blandon, the global head of learning and development for advertising agency VMLY&R. “We’re all on this learning curve together, so from that perspective, there’s an even playing field.”

If more seasoned workers express resistance to new tools, it’s not on stubborn principle, but because they’ve seen tech trends before, said Heather Tinsley-Fix, a senior advisor at AARP, which offers a multigenerational skill-building platform. How many promising new ideas have been adopted only for them to be made obsolete or replaced just as quickly? “Whereas a younger worker who’s 20 years old, this might be their first or second change of processor platform,” Tinsley-Fix observed.

Older workers pump the brakes out of judicious caution while “young workers charging ahead, and it looks like younger workers are better at this,” said Leonardi.

The distorted notion that older workers look unkindly at change can do a lot of damage to a well-developed career. According to the Generation.org study, hiring managers said that reluctance to learn new technologies is the No. 1 characteristic most likely to limit the success of job seekers 45 and older. No. 2 is the inability to learn new skills. In addition, hiring managers tend to think of workers under age 45 as being more “application-ready,” that they have more relevant experience and are a better culture fit.

But those same managers fail to support their own beliefs. The same survey found that when asked about overall performance, 87% of hiring managers said that their older workers perform as well or better than their younger peers.

Given the penalties for being “old” in the workplace, mid- and late-career workers worry about looking like the stereotype. “There’s this internalized ageism, where they’re afraid that they’re going to be perceived as slow and not able to do it better or fast enough,” said Tinsley-Fix. “If I don’t know how to do something on, say, LinkedIn, I will go to someone and ask them to teach me, but I will never admit it openly because I’m mid-career, and I don’t want people to know that I don’t know.”

Kyra Sutton, who teaches at the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations, said the ability to use or learn new skills isn’t usually what divides the generations, it’s the format. Sutton is currently surveying her students about their learning preferences, and the unofficial results indicate that “those under 25 prefer mechanisms like TikTok and YouTube. People that are 45 and older still want technology, but they want it consumed in a different way. TED Talks or podcasts are very popular among that group.” 

Blandon at VMLY&R flagged something similar. “I think learning styles are more personality-based than age-based, but if I had to say where age differences emerge, it would be in attention span. For our entry-level folks, we need to come at them with short-form video.”

Leonardi notes that motivation can also vary across generations. Older workers, he’s found, have less patience for learning things they aren’t interested in. Employers may be wise to have senior team members take on new tech that corresponds to a totally new skill they’re interested in learning. “Let your older workers surprise you,” Leonardi said. “Give them the opportunity to use a new tool not for the sake of using a new tool, but to expand their own knowledge, and they will have the motivation.”

For many, interest is self-generated. “There have been times in this when I’ve become incredibly frustrated,” said Fleshman, the Bay Area entrepreneur. The video tools she’s teaching herself don’t integrate with each other, and the standards for video production are exceedingly high. “Because we have all these tools at our disposal, the standards of what things should look and feel like are so high. And then it’s me and my laptop.”

Why, then, didn’t she just hire out the work? Wouldn’t it be easier to write the content herself and hire experts to do the video production? Because it’s new, she said. It could land her this new client, and now she’s considering recording other sessions and gating them behind a paywall. “I wanted to develop a new skill, and I wanted to see what these different things are capable of doing. I’m doing this on contract for another company, but I can apply this to my own. I’m excited about that possibility.” 

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Quartz at Work, Fast Company, Digiday’s Worklife, and Food Technology, among others.

 

 

 

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Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza November 04, 2024

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HR is no longer a static department, now it has to make things happen.Law practice also develops the confrontational confidence CHROs need. “You need to have had the experience of walking into a senior leader’s office, closing the door, giving them feedback, and challenging them on an issue where you think there’s a pretty good chance of getting fired today,” Korn Ferry’s Kaplan said. At times, it’s as diplomatic as managing the CEO’s personality and presenting even the most uncharismatic leaders to the workforce as people who can be trusted, which sounds a lot like what might happen in a courtroom.Before Claudia Toussaint became the chief people officer at the global water-technology company Xylem, she was the company’s general counsel. CHROs can’t afford to be intimidated by hierarchy, she said. They have to be prepared to tell the CEO that they’re out of line, and why it matters. The professional training of an attorney comes in handy too. Lawyers gather evidence, make conclusions, and present a case. “That skillset, I think, is far more valuable today in the HR function than five years ago or ten years ago,” Toussaint said. “I think that’s why people are increasingly saying, ‘These people that have a law degree and have been trained to think systemically, to take data, analyze data, reach conclusions from it, and then drive impact from those conclusions—that’s actually not a bad background for leading HR function.’”HR and the general counsel’s office have a natural relationship. Maral Kazanjian, the CHRO at the credit-rating agency Moody’s, felt she was effectively moonlighting as an HR professional while working as the firm’s attorney, applying the law to all kinds of employment matters. “I was really lucky because Moody’s is a very successful company and also has a really fast-growing information-services business within the traditional ratings agency. Because they were growing so fast, a lot of employment issues arose,” she told From Day One. “We were in different jurisdictions. We had different questions we wanted to answer about ‘How do we do hiring right? How do we handle performance management? How do we maintain a focus on being inclusive? How do we do promotions right?’ There are legal questions, then there are operational and human capital questions.” Kazanjian’s first time leading the people function was at WeWork during the dog days of the pandemic. In February 2022, she returned to Moody’s, where she occupies the chief people officer job today.Jennifer Manchester, the CHRO at Fiserv, is a relatively new arrival to the C-suite, and like Kazanjian, has jumped industries. Manchester first crossed paths with HR at her former employer, the Dow Chemical Co., where she worked in the general counsel’s office on mergers, acquisitions, and other corporate transactions. “I always loved the employment piece and the people side of things the best. That’s where I figured it out: That was really ultimately what I wanted to do.”Manchester moved over to Fiserv in 2015, working closely with HR as a labor attorney, and ascended to the CHRO seat last spring, “I’ve always gravitated toward people issues, trying to solve problems. It’s such a dynamic role.” But about this she was clear: You can’t just pluck any attorney out of the legal department and promote them to the chief position. “You have to have some substantive core expertise in HR or employment. HR is a real science, and I don’t think anyone can just do it.”Deep, Successful Experience in HR Counts TooA background in HR is hardly irrelevant. Among the 10 highest-ranked companies on the Fortune 500, most of their CHROs have spent decades as HR practitioners. Melissa Hagerman, CHRO at insurance firm Genworth, came up through the HR department, and, like many of her peers in the Fortune 500, has worked across industries, including consumer and automotive retail and healthcare. She joined the HR field when it was still known as the personnel department. Being an effective CHRO takes compassion and diplomatic agility, she said. And it can’t be done without a natural curiosity for businesses. “As a CHRO, you have to really genuinely care about what the business is doing and where we’re heading, and you have to care about the people that are on the path to get us there. That is something that I really try to embrace and live by every day.”Hagerman is also a keen scout, continually monitoring what’s going on both inside and outside the organization, “understanding what’s happening politically and socially in the markets so that I can weigh in, whether that’s with our executive team or with our board of directors, or being able to think about how those may impact eventually our workforce.”HR has far more credibility and influence than in the past, Hagerman said, reflecting on her decades in the department. “The world now understands that people resources are really fundamental to the bottom line. Succession planning, development of associates—the focus on those things is far greater now than they ever were. Of course, cybersecurity, protection of data–all of those things–are more in the limelight now than ever.”Yet Your Next CHRO May Not Be Working In HR Right NowA career in HR can win you the seat at the top now, but that may not be true for the next generation of CHROs. Today, businesses seldom want an HR executive who has spent all their time in the department, said Wilson at Heidrick & Struggles. “In the companies we work with, it’s often said that if you can find somebody with a business background who’s either been in management consulting or held either a P&L role or a functional role outside of HR, that’s more interesting to us.”The next crisis is always around the corner, Korn Ferry’s Kaplan told From Day One, and HR has to be there to meet it. He rattled off a list of recent trials, from financial and economic wobbles, political unrest, racial injustice, reproductive rights, return to office, artificial intelligence, and gun crime. “If you are not prepared to put on your dance shoes and figure it out, you can’t do this job. More than academic credentials, intellect, or experience, you have to be able to tap dance.” As a result, people aren’t exactly grappling for the seat, he said. It’s a big job and it’s tough to recruit for. Some people get too close to the sun and opt out; others don’t realize what they’re signing up for before it’s too late.Everyone is looking for agility in the role. Bremen at WTW speculated that consumer-oriented industries–like retail, fast-moving consumer goods, cosmetics, or fashion–may be developing tomorrow’s most coveted CHROs. Tech firms develop great HR talent too because they have to marry operational complexity with consumer demands. Regardless of industry, he believes the most successful future CHROs are schooling themselves in the application of new technologies, particularly artificial intelligence, and have analytical capabilities far superior to their predecessors.In case you were thinking of plucking your next CHRO from the Wharton School, however, Kaplan cast doubt on the wisdom of choosing an MBA for the job simply because they’re a whiz at business. “If someone says to me, ‘I’m not an HR person, I’m a business person,’ that is a sign that I’m wasting time. I’ve never heard a CFO say, ‘I’m not a finance person, I’m a business person.’”Disciplines like finance can be taught in school, Kaplan argued, but HR is learned through apprenticeship. Management consultants who spoke to From Day One predicted that the future chiefs who are coming up through the HR department are leading complex functions at the moment, as heads of talent or directors of compensation and benefits.As today’s CHROs consider their potential successors, what are they looking for? At Moody’s, Kazanjian wants someone who is open-minded, bold, and analytical. She imagines that person might be in law, or they might be in management consulting. Toussaint wants someone who deeply understands the company culture at Xylem as well as how the business makes money, someone who’s good at data analysis, and someone who is a “truth teller,” uncowed by hierarchy. Manchester hopes her Fiserv successor has financial acumen and an always-learning attitude. At Genworth, Hagerman wants a values-driven, business-minded leader with deep knowledge of HR and a knack for diplomacy. Someone who is willing to uphold integrity, “above all else.”“Once upon a time, it was possible to be the most senior HR leader in a company and not have a grounding in the business fundamentals,” Bremen said. “That skillset is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition.” Yet business acumen alone isn’t enough without a deep understanding of the CHRO discipline, though he’s seen it happen. “They struggle. Just as you would struggle if you put someone in a chief marketing officer role who did not have a background in marketing. Sometimes leaders take those HR skills for granted.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Quartz, Business Insider, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza September 24, 2024
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