Baby Boomers and Millennials Must Learn to Teach Each Other

Old-timer Victor remembers that bad run-in your company once had with a certain supplier; he warns you to check all references before signing a crucial contract. New comer Sasha seems to keep to herself, but she turns out to be one of the best salespeople on your staff. She shows the rest of the team how she found six new client leads just by using her Facebook contacts.

When most organizations think about "knowledge transfer," they think in terms of veterans of the organization mentoring the new hires, younger people with little experience. But increasingly, younger workers are bringing in new skills that are valuable to an organization, the Conference Board points out in a new report.

"As the baby-boom generation of corporate leaders and experts approaches retirement, business in the U.S., Canada, and many European nations face the loss of experience and knowledge on an unprecedented scale," says Diane Piktialis, co-author with Kent Greenes of the report, "Bridging the Gaps: How to Transfer Knowledge in Today's Multigenerational Workplace." Piktialis notes, "Younger workers can't be counted on to fill the void, as they lack the experience that builds deep expertise. They also tend to change jobs frequently, taking their technological savvy and any knowledge they've gained with them."

With potential brain drains from both retiring baby boomers and job-hopping Gen Xers and millennials, managers are challenged to keep institutional knowledge intact and organizational learning and innovation expanding.

The Conference Board report urges managers to understand the different learning styles of the generations and to ensure that receivers of "knowledge transfer" understand that it's a two-way street. The report identifies four generations working side-by-side in many of today's workplaces, each with distinctly different learning styles:

* Matures or veterans (born 1925-1945) and baby boomers (1946-1964) prefer to learn via formal classroom instruction and printed texts; they tend to be more verbal than visually oriented communicators.

* Gen Xers (1965-1979) prefer informal learning but are adept at formal classroom learning as well. They strongly prefer action-oriented learning that focuses on solving real problems. As the first generation to grow up alongside the development of computers, their learning style is more visual than verbal, the report notes.