The New Workforce Equation: Generations, Gender and the Future of Work | Milan Longevity Summit 2026

*The workforce is becoming more diverse by age, gender, experience, expectations, and life stage. Are our organisations evolving with it?* Longer working lives, demographic change, shifting gender roles, new expectations around flexibility and purpose, and the arrival of new generations into the workplace are fundamentally changing the composition of the workforce. For organisations, this creates both complexity and opportunity. In this panel from the *Humanity Stage at the Milan Longevity Summit 2026*, *Patrizia Brognoli, Paola Gerbaudo, Camilla Buttà, and Dalila D’Ingeo* explore how companies can respond to a workforce in which traditional assumptions about age, gender, careers, leadership, and life stages increasingly no longer apply. Bringing together perspectives from *diversity and inclusion, business, health, sustainability, communication, and cultural research*, the conversation examines what people increasingly expect from work and what organisations need to rethink in return. How do different generations experience the workplace? How are expectations around career, leadership, flexibility, caregiving, wellbeing, and purpose changing? Where do gender inequalities persist across different stages of working life? And how can organisations create cultures where difference becomes an asset rather than something employees are expected to overcome? The conversation also moves beyond representation. Building an inclusive workforce is not simply about bringing different people into the same organisation. It means understanding how policies, workplace cultures, career structures, leadership models, and everyday behaviours can create very different experiences and opportunities for different people. *Participants:* • Patrizia Brognoli – Diversity and Inclusion Manager, Decathlon Italy • Paola Gerbaudo – Strategic Account Manager Health Systems IIG, Philips • Camilla Buttà – Sustainability & Communication Manager, Vector • Dalila D’Ingeo – Cultural Anthropologist & Researcher, Valore D As people live and work for longer, organisations may increasingly include individuals separated by several decades of age but connected by the same workplace. The challenge is not to make every generation think or work in the same way. *It is to build organisations capable of recognising different needs, experiences, and ambitions, while creating the conditions for everyone to contribute, grow, and belong.* *Powered by Valore D* #MilanLongevitySummit #FutureOfWork #FutureOfWorkforce #GenderEquity #Generations #DiversityAndInclusion #IntergenerationalWork #Humanity #Longevity #WorkplaceCulture