Aged care should embrace Gen Y

When career coach Avril Henry thinks about aged care, the words “friendly, fun and fantastic” come to mind.

Ms Henry was one of many keynote speakers to address delegates about the shortage of workers in the aged care sector at Aged Care Association Australia’s 30^th Annual Congress on the Gold Coast this week.

DPS News listened as Ms Henry challenged aged care providers with the question, “What do you do to engage and attract younger workers into the industry?”

“Why do people work in aged care?” Ms Henry asked. “This is what I want to see in your job advertisements: Come and work in a profession where you can make a difference in the lives of people who need help.”

Ms Henry is a widely acclaimed keynote speaker, consultant, business and career coach, mentor and author, who is passionate about generational, gender and cultural diversity, and developing collaborative leaders and positive workplaces.

According to Ms Henry, Generation Y has a “huge soft spot” for older people.

“We paint them as a generation who are selfish, yet I know Generation Y have a very strong social conscious and want to be connected to their community,” she said.

Loyal to ‘good’ managers and ‘good’ leaders, Ms Henry said Generation Y are trustworthy team players as they are “more collaborative and less competitive” than other generations.

“Their strategy and motto is how do we work smarter not harder,” she said, adding generation Y want “more of a mentor and less of a boss”.

“You need to be resourceful and help Generation Y achieve top performance in their jobs… they want a mentor that will explain things to them. I call them Generation W.H.Y. They ask questions and it gets misread as challenging authority, when really what they want is to add value.”

Ms Henry claimed two reasons Generation Y often leave the workplace included a bad manager and not having a sense of connectedness to the team and organisation.

With the importance of “getting branding right”, Ms Henry said effective branding would help “sell organisations”.

“It needs to be relevant and meaningful, and engage people not just on an intellectual level, but a heart level.

“What you need is a brand or statement that connects with everyone, through to the cleaners to the executive board.”

“When you say your organisations name or your facility’s name, what does it mean to people outside of your industry who you want to attract into your industry?

“If you, in one sentence, cannot say what you do in aged care, then how is anyone else going to know and be attracted?” Ms Henry asked.

Aged care workers have the ability to “make a difference” in people’s lives.

“You enable people to spend their twilight years in dignity. That’s what I want to see in your ads because that’s what will make people come and work with you,” Ms Henry claimed.

“The challenge to you is to embrace Generation Y… they are the blood stream of change,” she added.

What strategies do you think the aged care industry needs to implement to attract more workers to the sector? Share your thoughts in the comment box below.