Researchers report that the millennial generation now makes up the largest share of the U.S. workforce. To be sure, the baby boomer and Generation X contingents remain strong, but the sheer number of younger workers makes them a force to be reckoned with. Longtime workers may think their young colleagues have a lot to learn, but employers are finding the youngest workers also have a lot to teach. 
Flipped, or reverse, mentoring is one way employers can cash in on the wisdom their youngest workers bring to the workforce. Mary George Opperman, vice president and chief human resources officer at Cornell University, is scheduled to present a talk called “Reverse Mentoring: Building Meaningful Intergenerational Relationships in the Workplace” at the Business and Legal Resources THRIVE 2016 Annual Conference, scheduled for May 12-13 in Las Vegas.
In March 2015, the Pew Research Center reported that its analysis of U.S. Census data showed that millennials, which Pew defined as adults ages 18 to 34 in 2015, had passed Generation X as the largest group in the U.S. workforce. Pew reported that in early 2015 millennials in the workforce numbered 53.5 million, Gen X 52.7 million, and boomers 44.6 million.
Those millions of young workers are accustomed to—and extremely comfortable with—using technology to find solutions to the problems they encounter at work. They also are adept at using that technology to communicate with coworkers young and old. So more and more employers are embracing the idea of using younger workers to teach their more senior colleagues how to get the most out of today’s tools.
“‘Flipped,’ or reverse, mentoring is not a new concept,” Opperman says. The term has been around since at least the 1990s and became popular when newer workers came into the workplace with a better understanding of the capabilities of technology than those who had more years of experience but were less tech savvy.
Jack Welch, retired CEO of General Electric, was an early fan of the reverse mentoring concept when he introduced it at his company in the late 1990s. A You Tube video of a late 1990s interview shows him telling about a conversation he had with the CEO of GE’s global consumer finance company. In their talk, the finance executive mentioned that he had recruited a young employee in the company to mentor him on e-business.
“That was one of the best ideas I’ve heard in years,” Welch said in the interview. So he decided to implement it on a wide scale, “and we tipped the organization upside down. We now have the youngest and brightest teaching the oldest.”
Communication and engagement
Reverse mentoring can accomplish more than just teaching new skills to workers not so familiar with how to get the most out of technology. The learning goes both ways and can make new employees more engaged workers.
How can employers best take advantage of the skills their youngest workers bring to the workplace? “The best advice I can give to an employer that wants to engage its youngest workers is to recognized that they bring skills, ambitions, and talents to the workplace—just like all workers from all generations do,” Opperman says.
Opperman says employers can leverage the skills of young workers—“particularly around use of technology to solve problems, engage in team-building, and advance new thinking”—while also providing the young workers opportunities to learn from those more senior to them in the workplace.
“This is not an ‘either-or’ proposition—rather it is the opportunity to maximize the contributions of everyone in the workplace,” Opperman says. “It may mean relaxing some time-honored practices of the hierarchy, but doing so may create better ideas.”
Understanding communication styles is part of getting the most out of reverse mentoring. For example, when workers from the millennial age group are given a problem, they may be more inclined than older workers to reach for a device and check You Tube or engage in real-time crowdsourcing practices to seek input from others, Opperman says.
“This comfort in team-based problem-solving and real-time feedback may differ from a more senior worker, who may send an email to several colleagues, call those in their network, or research the issue using the Internet or other sources,” Opperman says, adding that “the great opportunity is in the power of multiple approaches.”