Reverse mentoring: A social exchange tool for keeping the boomers engaged and millennials committed

The aging of the workforce and the concurrent advent of the Millennials represent a major demographic and sociological phenomenon that can have dominant implications for organizations, as a whole. This presents a situation, where the Boomers and Millennials will be working together for the next decade or so. In the wake of mass scale retrenchments and economic upheaval, this is creating a greater urgency for HRD professionals to focus more attention on not only retaining this amalgamated workforce but also on keeping them actively engaged. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to propose reverse mentoring as a social exchange tool, which will leverage the expertise of both generations, that is, Boomers and Millennials, respectively, by being perceptive of their different needs, value systems, and work demands. We conclude by emphasizing different outcomes of reverse mentoring program for Boomers and Millennials and identify areas for future research.