What makes age diverse teams effective? Results from a six-year research program

Abstract

Based on a new model of productivity in age diverse tams, ¿ndings from a six-year research program are reported in which data from more than 745 natural teams with 8,848 employees in three different ¿elds (car production, administrative work, ¿nancial services) were collected. Moreover, central assumptions of this model were tested with a representative survey of the German workforce (N = 2,000). Results support both signi¿cant advantages and disadvantages for age-mixed teams. Based on the findings, the following preconditions for the effectiveness of age diverse teams are identi¿ed: high task complexity, low salience and high appreciation of age diversity, a positive team climate, low age-discrimination, ergonomic design of work places, and the use of age differentiated leadership. Based on these insights, we developed a new training for supervisors, which addresses the aforementioned aspects and seeks to improve team performance and health of team members. It was found that the training reduces age stereotypes, team conflicts and enhances innovation. Thus, we can conclude that effective interventions for a successful integration of elderly employees in work groups are available and that combinations of measures that address ergonomic design issues, team composition and leadership are to be strongly recommended for practice.

Organizational Performance Consequences of Age Diversity: Inspecting the Role of Diversity‐Friendly HR Policies and Top Managers’ Negative Age Stereotypes

“…Wegge et al. () describe an evaluated supervisor training programme that has reduced age stereotypes and age‐based conflict in age diverse teams. Second, our data indicate that diversity‐friendly HR policies signal the employees that their organization makes serious efforts to support diversity.…”

“…As detected at the team level (e.g. Wegge et al., ), processes of age subgroup formation (Tajfel and Turner, ) might also occur at the organizational level, inciting subgroup competition and subsequently social fragmentation (Garcia‐Prieto et al., ; Kunze et al., ).…”

Unraveling the impact of workforce age diversity on labor productivity: The moderating role of firm size and job security

“…In the case of high age variety, we argue that value differences between employees of different ages are not likely to become salient. With growing age variety, the number of different ages—and associated values—represented in the organization increases so that each employee serves as a bridge across the relatively small differences in values between his or her neighbors in the age distribution (Wegge et al, ). Owing to the absence of large, well‐delineated subgroups of employees of a similar age, it is less likely that value‐based tensions between subgroups, referring to the so‐called value gap, will arise and hamper cooperation (Bell et al, ; Carton & Cummings, ; Harrison & Klein, ; Klein & Harrison, ; Pelled, ).…”

Include, Individualize, and Integrate: Organizational Meta-strategies for Mature Workers

“…Team and compositional approaches to age diversity suggest that, unless actively managed, age diversity in work teams tends to be associated with negative effects on team and organizational outcomes (Wegge & Schmidt, 2009;Williams & O'Reilly, 1998) or has little benefits for performance (Bell, Villado, Lukasik, Belau, & Briggs, 2011;Horwitz & Horwitz, 2007). However, emerging research is showing that organizations can harness the advantages of age diversity if specific interventions are made to ensure the conditions that age diverse teams need in order to thrive (Wegge et al, 2012), or when the interventions foster positive intergenerational learning and knowledge sharing processes (Gerpott, Lehmann-Willenbrock, & Voelpel, 2017;Harvey, 2012). Thus, organizational strategies need to go beyond "include" (mostly focused on non-mature workers/stakeholders) and "individualize" (mostly focused on mature workers) to explicitly improve how members of diverse age groups interact, share knowledge, and learn from each other.…”