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An OECD study highlights the growing proportion of older workers within companies. With the aging of the world’s population, this trend will continue to strengthen: for example, France’s share of the workforce over the age of 55 is estimated at 23% in 2031. Yet many companies have no specific approach to preparing for this evolution of the job market. Take a look at your organization:

- What are you doing to retain, or even rehire older employees? Mitsubishi Corporation created a career center dedicated exclusively to employees aged 60 and over, which includes a job marketplace and personalized advice.

- Are your training programs adapted? In 2021, Atos launched a program to fill the skills gaps of its 21,000 employees over the age of 50. The people concerned have set themselves development objectives and have selected the most beneficial training courses and certifications for their progression.

- Do you open the door to forms of work that reflect the specific expectations and skills of older workers? BMW’s Senior Experts program allows retirees to return to the company on a part-time basis in order to share their expertise with younger employees. This helps both the organization to meet the need for flexibility and these senior experts to perform less physically demanding tasks, while at the same time enhancing their skills.

Source: Better with Age: The Rising Importance of Older Workers, James Root, Andrew Schwedel, Mike Haslett Nicole Bitler, Bain & Company, July 2023.

According to a Pew Research Center study of 10,000 American adults, our societies are increasingly polarized. In particular, we are less likely to make concessions in our exchanges, and our ability to listen to our interlocutors has deteriorated. This trend is also affecting professional discussions, with negative repercussions on collaboration, creativity and performance. Here are a few tips to bring an unproductive discussion out of a dead end:

- Approach every conversation by making the bet that you are going to learn something. You will thus put yourself in a propitious frame of mind to enrich the exchange, beyond the affirmation of your own point of view.

- Be fully present. When our attention is split between listening and our own thoughts, we have a greater tendency to overreact to certain words that appear to confirm our preconceptions.

- Listen with the intention of understanding, without immediately preparing your response. Ask open questions to better understand the way in which your interlocutor sees the situation, and be prepared to be surprised by their point of view.

Source:  10 ways to have a better conversation, Celeste Headlee, TEDxCreativeCoast, May 2015.

Has it ever happened to you to have a word at the tip of your tongue, or to not remember what someone said to you a few minutes earlier? These small glitches in our memory are very common and are nothing to worry about—even if they can be the cause of some frustrations. They are linked to the manner in which our brain stores and retrieves memorized information:

- To properly store information, the key consists in concentrating our attention. Most of the time, when we forget a piece of information, it is because we have processed it automatically, without paying attention to it, or because our attention was solicited elsewhere. All it takes, for example, is to think about what we have to do for the day or to receive a notification for our attention to be diverted. Our brain then assumes that the information to which we are not truly attentive is not sufficiently important to be memorized.

- As for the “word at the tip of your tongue”, it is due to the fact that the brain mistakenly activates the wrong neural network to retrieve the information. The more you attempt to find this missing word, the more you activate this wrong network. When this occurs, the solution is therefore to accept bringing your search to a momentary halt. This gives the appropriate neural network a chance to activate when you restart your search a few instants later.

Source: How your memory works — and why forgetting is totally OK, Lisa Genova, TED Membership, March 2021.

98% of companies have already been affected by a cybersecurity incident that initially arose within a partner organization. This risk grows as operations become digitalized and the interconnection between the systems of various stakeholders is enhanced: clients, distributors, partners, tier 1 and 2 suppliers, etc.

But how can you optimally counter the multiplicity of possible risks? Within the framework of a survey of best practices in the market, the experts at Boston Consulting Group have shared an approach for prioritizing efforts:

- Start by identifying the minimal level of information required to assess your suppliers’ level of exposure to cyber risks. Then, focus your analyses on those who appear to present the greatest danger of contamination.

- Practice different cyber-attack scenarios, in partnership with a representative sample of your suppliers, in order to document with as much precision as possible your principal risks and the possible options to counter them.

- Use this analysis to identify the protective actions to be undertaken as a priority, whether internally or with key suppliers and partners.

This approach enables you to reinforce your cybersecurity in a targeted and progressive manner: a far more effective method than trying from the outset to establish a global approach to be deployed across your entire range of suppliers.

Source: Is Your Supply Chain Cyber-Secure?, Kris Winkler, Colin Troha, Ben Aylor, Nadine Moore, Boston Consulting Group, October 2023.

Did you know? A study conducted on over 250 seminars in 10 countries showed that men were two and a half times more likely to ask questions at the end of a conference than women. A gap that can also be observed in meetings and other professional encounters. According to sociologists, this imbalance reflects persistent structural differences in educational patterns. Boys are encouraged to assert themselves and fill space very early, whereas girls are more invited to display their humility and integrate into the collective—at the cost of sometimes fading into the background. Even though society is evolving, many of us still have to deal with these cultural legacies. Fortunately, some very simple practices can contribute to restoring a balance:

- At the close of a presentation, give the floor for the first reaction to a woman. It has been demonstrated that this opens up other people’s voices, allowing everyone’s point of view to be heard and benefited from.

- In a meeting or seminar, ask everyone to first take a moment for individual reflection—for instance by recording their questions or comments on post-it notes or on a mobile app, then go around the table to invite each person to speak.

Source:  The Authority Gap, Mary Ann Sieghart, Doubleday, 2021.