In a constantly evolving business environment, the beauty, cosmetics, and pharma sector faces a key challenge: the increasing presence of senior talent and the coexistence of multiple generations in the workplace. Is this a threat to the sector's competitiveness or a strategic opportunity?
Senior Talent: Underappreciated Experience
Professionals over 50 possess a wealth of knowledge, networks, and accumulated experience that can be a differentiator in such a customer-centric sector. Their understanding of the market and their historical perspective on consumer evolution can provide significant strategic value, especially in growth segments like skincare for older ages or inclusive cosmetics.
However, biases about their technological adaptability and flexibility in changing environments persist. In my experience as a talent expert and headhunter, these perceptions are often far from reality. Many senior professionals demonstrate a great capacity for learning and adopting new tools when they understand their impact on business strategy. Moreover, their role as natural mentors allows for a key transfer of knowledge to younger generations. Let’s not forget that AI and digitization come to support and enhance human talent, but never to replace it. One of the keys to being able to use AI and other digital tools is not only knowing how to communicate with them but also being able to critically assess the information they provide. For this, senior experience is vital.
Companies that actively incorporate senior talent can differentiate themselves in aspects such as:
- Established network of contacts: Access to highly qualified talent and business opportunities.
- Greater stability and commitment: Reduction in turnover and associated costs of selection and training.
- Mentoring and leadership capacity: Creation of an ecosystem where knowledge flows between generations.
Generational Diversity: The Challenge of Integration
Today, up to four generations can coexist in the same organization: baby boomers, Generation X, millennials, and centennials. Each with different values, expectations, and ways of communicating. For example, while centennials seek a purpose aligned with sustainability and diversity, baby boomers prioritize stability and tangible achievements.
The most innovative companies have implemented reverse mentoring programs, where younger professionals train the more experienced in digital technologies, while seniors provide strategic and emotional insights. Various studies support that diverse teams are more creative, innovative, and effective in decision-making, which translates into better business results.
Organizational Culture: The Key to Attracting the Best Talent
The real challenge is not generational coexistence, but how it is managed from the organizational strategy. For companies in the beauty, cosmetics, and pharma sector, integrating senior talent and promoting generational diversity is key, both internally and in attracting highly qualified profiles, for several reasons:
- Connection with the customer: A diverse team better reflects the needs of an equally diverse consumer.
- Collaborative innovation: Creativity arises from the combination of new ideas and established experience.
- Improved adaptability to changes, as they have teams where experience and innovation coexist complementarily.
- Utilize a greater variety of attraction channels, from professional networks to senior talent programs, accessing a broader pool of candidates.
- Facilitates the attraction of young talent, who value the opportunity to learn from more experienced profiles through reverse mentoring models.
- Strong employer brand: Inclusion and management of generational talent impact the company's perception in the labor market, projecting an image of an inclusive, innovative, socially responsible company committed to professional evolution over time, as well as to sustainability and well-being trends.
The Future of Talent in the Sector
Companies that want to remain competitive must rethink their talent acquisition and retention strategy from a generational diversity perspective. This involves:
- Attracting talent without generational biases, leveraging different search channels and senior talent programs.
- Investing in continuous training, both in digital skills for senior profiles and in soft skills for younger generations. An initiative that can help naturally with this is the implementation of cross-mentoring, creating spaces for knowledge and skill exchange between generations and roles.
- Designing flexible retention strategies, that adapt and are attractive to the needs and motivations of each generation, promoting benefits aligned with their expectations. This improves the company's perception in the labor market.
We must be very aware that these sectors require specialized profiles that are not always easy to find: researchers and specialized scientists, regulation and certification specialists, sustainable packaging designers, ethical marketing experts, advisors, trainers and educators, certified stylists and makeup artists, Medical Science Liaison, chemists and cosmetic formulators, biotechnology engineers, nanomedicine specialists; and a long list of others…
This implies designing more focused, professionalized recruitment processes, headhunting, that identify not only technical competencies but also values and organizational culture aligned with ethics and sustainability. It is essential to ensure a “bias-free” selection that does not pose an obstacle to obtaining the most suitable talent for the position, the team, the leader, and the company's situation.
Senior talent is not a burden, but a key resource for competitiveness. Generational diversity is not a problem, but an advantage for innovation and sustainable growth. The key is to embrace it and manage it with a clear strategy.