the Portico
“Our mission is to enhance the relationship between the University and its alumni and friends and promoted pride and commitment within the University Community.”The era of your birth may determine how well you get along with the boss, and whether or not you will one day be the boss
By Rebecca Kendall
How was your work day? Did you spend time planning your next career move? Go to the gym at lunch? Get or give a pat on the back? Did you text message your co-workers, or arrange a face-to-face meeting to solve a problem?
Whatever your job or the challenges you faced today, the way you approach your work day has a lot to do with when you were born.
You’ve probably experienced that, says Guelph business professor Sean Lyons, if you work with or manage a workforce of people who vary in age from twenty-something to qualifying for a senior’s discount. Those differences are causing major headaches for employers who are, for the first time in history, managing the wants and needs of four separate and distinct age groups: matures, born before 1945; baby boomers, born between 1945 and 1964; generation X, born between 1965 and 1979; and millennials, born from 1979 and on.
“There’s tremendous new interest in this as the millennial generation is starting to enter the workforce,” says Lyons, who joined the new College of Management and Economics in January. “I knew this was going to happen because as a professor I’ve seen some of these same changes in the classroom in terms of attitude and values. I knew this tsunami was going to eventually hit the workplace.”
For the past year or so, his phone has been ringing off the hook and e-mails have been filling up his inbox as employers grapple with office issues resulting from differences in work attitudes. Some of these calls for help are coming from employers who haven’t done any major hiring in 15 years and are now having difficulty with new employees.
“They’re recruiting this new generation, but don’t know how to manage them. Employers think millennial employees are so different and harder to please,” says Lyons. “Neither group knows the other’s expectations and this has created a situation where help is needed to bridge the gap.”
Many of the differences and dilemmas being encountered can be attributed to the political and economic realities people grew up in, says Lyons, who hails from Windsor, Ont. The formative experiences of the oldest workers included the Great Depression, the development of the social security system and the Second World War. Their generation rebuilt after economic disaster, and they have always been known as hard-working, disciplined and industrious.
Baby boomers had a very different experience. They were born amid an explosive population boom and entered the workforce alongside an unprecedented number of same-age workers. This made them highly competitive and success-oriented, so work often took priority over family. Boomers are a generation that values company loyalty and believes in staying with one employer for their entire career. This generation was also the first to see unprecedented numbers of women entering the workforce, divorce rates sky-rocket and birth rates plummet, says Lyons.
Watching all this family breakdown and work stress unfold was generation X. At age 35, Lyons is a member of this group. “Generation X was never signing up for that deal,” he says. “From the beginning, Gen X-ers have always been about work-life balance.”
With three small children, Lyons admits to choosing the University of Guelph partly because he and his wife liked the city and its location – close to friends in Toronto and a reasonable drive to visit their families in Windsor and Ottawa.
When generation X entered the Canadian workforce in the 1980s and 1990s, the national economy was weak, and as a result, they had a more difficult time getting their careers established, he says.
“With corporate downsizing squeezing people out of jobs, they found themselves in competition with baby boomers. Entry-level jobs were being filled by people with a lot more experience, so generation X went back to school and many of them took underemployment jobs in order to make do.”
This resulted in a highly educated and underemployed generation, he says. Social realities such as distrust of authority and government, the HIV/AIDS epidemic and an ailing planet also had effects on this group and gave them a strong sense of independence and individualism.
And most recently, the millennials have made their entrance into the work world. This group has largely been taught by their baby-boomer parents to be independent-minded, to question authority and negotiate with their parents and teachers rather than listen to authority. “They’re the product of the self-esteem parenting movement and have received a lot of positive attention throughout their lives,” says Lyons.
Although seemingly harmless, this has had extreme consequences, including a generation that has an extremely high sense of self-esteem that’s not rooted in any sort of achievement or proven success, he adds. “When you teach people to have high self-esteem for no reason, it leads to narcissism. They’re concerned with self-admiration, self-centeredness and self-regard, which are never considered to be positive personality traits.”
As a result of differences between these groups, each generation wants different things from their work. “That’s the biggest finding from my studies,” says Lyons. “Matures want to be respected for their loyalty and want to continue to be relevant, even as they move toward retirement. Baby boomers are looking for balance and meaning in their working lives as they head into the late stages of their careers. Looking to the future, these two groups are concerned that generation X and the millennials do not have the dedication and drive needed to take over the reins from them, so giving up the company reins is likely to be difficult for them.”
When advising employers on how to handle the myriad personality types and office players, Lyons asks them to view generational value differences as a legitimate form of diversity and treat each generation’s concerns, needs and challenges as valid.
“There’s often an impulse to assume that young people think and act the same way we did when we were their age, but the world in which today’s young people live is very different and has shaped their view of the world differently. They’re not wrong or naive, just different.”
Think about it for a minute. Computer, ATM machines and cell phones have always existed for them. Millennials think the Kennedy tragedy is a plane crash, and the “big-news” events of their time are the Columbine shootings, Princess Di’s death, Clinton’s impeachment scandal, OJ’s trial and the war in Iraq.
Lyons also recommends that baby boomers begin to see that their view of what’s good, bad and normal must be adjusted to include other perspectives.
“Now that they are being confronted by a new set of values and expectations, boomers wonder why younger people don’t do things normally, rather than considering that what’s normal has changed,” he says.
Lyons also has advice for the younger cohorts, including the importance of having realistic expectations about their careers and lives.
“We’ve been told by our parents that we can be anything and do anything, but success in the ‘real world’ requires a realistic assessment of our own strengths and weaknesses.”
He also asks millennials and Gen Xers to remember that baby boomers still largely sit at the top of the corporate food chain and says it’s important for younger employees to try to understand the values and perspectives of more experienced co-workers. Generation X and millennials must also recognize the existence of negative stereotypes about their own age groups and should actively work to dispel them, says Lyons.
Equally important, Lyons warns younger workers about comparing their own careers with those of baby boomers, who generally joined the workforce earlier in life and didn’t carry the debt load of today’s university and college graduates. “It’s not reasonable to assume that you can achieve the same wealth and success by the same age as your parents,” he says.
Generation gap makers
Each generation’s attitudes are shaped by the major personalities and events experienced during their formative years.
Matures
Matures
(also called the silent generation)
Sports figures: Cassius Clay, Jackie Robinson
Movies: Singing in the Rain, Rebel Without a Cause
Music: Rogers and Hammerstein, big bands
Inventions: Transistor, splitting the atom, a house in the suburbs
Television: Only a few people had one
Big deals: Sputnik, Cold War, Korean War, rising divorce rate
Baby boomers
Sports figures: Rocky Marciani, Mickey Mantle
Movies: Psycho, Rocky, Sound of Music
Music: Elvis, the Beatles, Woodstock
Inventions: Hula hoop, Salk vaccine, heart transplant, Barbie dolls
Television: Neil Armstrong walks on the moon, All in the Family
Big deals: Martin Luther King assassinated, Dr. Spock, Dr. Seuss
Baby boomers
Generation X
Sports figures: Mike Tyson, Wayne Gretzky
Movies: Raiders of the Lost Ark, Silence of the Lambs
Music: Michael Jackson, Madonna, MTV
Inventions: Rubik’s Cube, Game Boy, latchkey kids
Television: Muppets, The Brady Bunch, Oprah Winfrey, Seinfeld
Big deals: Star Wars, Berlin Wall crumbles, AIDS, Cell phones, Challenger explosion
Millennials
(also called the Echo generation)
Sports figures: Michael Jordan, Mark McGwire, Cassie Campbell
Movies: Titanic, Braveheart
Music: Spice Girls, Britney Spears, Kanye West
Inventions: Play Station, cloning, genetic engineering, Canadarm
Television: The Simpsons, OJ trial, reality TV, American Idol
Big deals: Text messaging, Facebook, Princess Diana, terrorism, George Bush and Iraq x2, volunteering
Generation X
Money matters:
Matures: Put it away, pay cash
Baby Boomers: Buy now, pay later
Generation X: Be cautious, save, save, save
Millennials: Earn to spend
Social norms:
Matures: Conform, respect authority
Baby Boomers: Optimistic, get involved
Generation X: Informal, skeptical, into having fun
Millennials: Confident, social, have extreme fun
Millennials
