Educate Your Employees on the Different Generations in the Workplace

The new, multigenerational workplace is a complex and dynamic organism that requires flexibility from everyone, but especially from managers.

It almost seems like a no-brainer these days, as pretty much everyone is starting to recognize that workplaces have a lot of diversity and variety in them.

But generations in the workplace and how managers handle them is a separate issue.

Employees have their own personal accountability for communicating properly and dealing with co-workers in an effective way, but accountability for the day-to-day business and for being effective as a team falls on the manager.

It’s the manager’s job to make sure the generations in the workplace are getting along and everything is going smoothly.

The biggest mistake I see managers make in the workplace, however, is not giving employees enough information to communicate properly with each other.

Typically, managers often inform employees about how to communicate with the various generations in the workplace.

They don’t, however, typically go a step further and let employees know why Generation Y prefers to be communicated to in a specific way. Or why Baby Boomers have a specific set of values. Or why the Silent Generation responds to authoritative structure differently than a Generation X employee might.

Employees need context and/or background information about the different generations in order to fully understand each one.

Giving employees this kind of “insider” information will help them truly understand their fellow co-workers. It will also give them an intrinsic motivation to meet their co-workers “where they live,” as opposed to just doing it because their manager told them to.

 In order to be more effective when training your managers on the different generations in the workplace, you should really take a look at the background of each generation and the context of it.

For example, the Silent Generation and the Baby Boomers grew up learning to have an adherence to loyalty to their company because the company took care of them with a pension at the end of their careers.

But as a Generation X employee, I saw my parents give loyalty to a company and then get fired after years of dedication because it was no longer economically viable to employ them. I didn’t see the loyalty returned that the Silents and Boomers saw. So these types of things feed into my world view and into what drives my values in the workplace—what I want out of it and how I interact with it.

That’s why it’s so important for employers/managers to provide as much context as possible for each of the generations in the workplace.

Recently I’ve had some instances where companies have had Boomers or Silents getting ready to retire, but then, due to the economy, have had these same employees decide not to retire yet.

So with that happening, and all the new Generation Yers who are coming into the workplace, I’ve had some opportunities to direct companies on what to do.

Coaching is a big part of my recommendation to employers. Coaching each generation on how to deal with the other generations in the workplace makes a big difference.

With a little bit of understanding and preparation, companies can find ways to help bridge the gap between the different generations in the workplace.

The new, multigenerational workplace is a complex and dynamic organism that requires flexibility from everyone, but especially from managers.