Generational Mixup

By: Katherine Davis, BGS Communications Associate

The recipe of Baby Boomer + Gen X + Gen Y has existed in many workplaces for years. Still, it is true that questions, misunderstandings, assumptions and opposing work styles often present themselves within multigenerational work cultures.

At the fourth annual Diverse Leadership Conference at Emory University in 2009, Hal Logan, senior vice president for strategic planning and industry relations at the automobile auction company Manheim, Inc., spoke about working with multiple generations and the different approaches those generations might have to getting the job done.

"The Boomers say, 'Let's have a meeting and talk about it,' while the Generation X attitude is, 'I'll do my part. You do yours.'"

Logan noted that Generation Y individuals, or the "Millennials," might instead say something like, "I can. I will. Just let me."

As a managing partner of Source Associates, LLC, and someone who's recruited for both national and smaller boutique firms, Jim Barton (BGS 1975, Indiana University) "has seen it all" as far as job-hunters, employers and work environments go. He believes that, many times, the multigenerational confusion begins when expectations are misunderstood—or when they are, quite simply, different.

"I could see this when my daughter switched jobs. At first, she was working for Baby Boomers, and they tended to want everything well-documented and planned-out," Barton said. "At her new company, there was a much younger management, and those individuals often want a quicker turnaround. They don't want a bad product, but they're willing to go through the process much more quickly."

He thinks employers and job candidates both have a duty to recognize what's true about a workplace, the generation or generations of its workforce and how communication can best be encouraged in such an environment.

"When you're hiring, you have to realize these truths about the generation you're hiring. If you're hiring Generation Y'ers, those new employees might want to receive emails and texts more than they want to be called," noted Barton. "These are questions that a job seeker would want to be asking. And from the employer's perspective, these are realities they should want to tune in to."