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Age in the workplace challenges
Challenges of the workplace age
Diversity in demographics of employees
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Today’s workplace is so diverse; there are interactions among individuals from various generations. This can have some serious implications on the working of the business because there are conflicts and disagreements. Each of these generations have different characteristics, interests and beliefs. This poses a significant problem for all managerial levels as each generation has different requests and different work ethics. Today’s workplace is composed of three prominent generations. These four generations are: -
• Baby-boomers
• Generation X
• Generation Y
Baby Boomers are the corporate individuals that are born between the years of 1946 and 1964. Individuals from this generation hold major top-level management positions in the Fortune 500 companies and multi-national establishments. Baby Boomers are very well educated and skilled people that are almost on the verge of retirement. Their retirement is going to have a major impact in the various industries because of the loss of skill and knowledge. Some of their most prominent characteristics are: -
• Hardworking and motivated
• Work-orientated
• Willing to sacrifice their personal lives for work
• Satisfaction in professional achievements
• Confident and independent
• Loyal to employer
• Goal-oriented
• Competitive
(Kane)
Generation X is the category of people born between 1965 and 1980. Over 60% of this generation has accomplished university level education. This generational mainly holds middle-management level positions in various organisations. Some key characteristics of Generation X are: -
• Independent and self-sufficient
• Value freedom and responsibility
• Technologically Adept
• Adapt to change
• More willing to change jobs
• Ambitious and eager to learn
• Work to ...
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...month programme, give days off if people have worked overtime and plan field trips of employees. These programmes would help motivate employees into coming to work and giving their best effort. These would also help to build the loyalty of many Gen Yers (What millenial workers, 2008).
All in all, as you can see, Generation Y is a very complex generation. Nor is it easy to attract them and nor is it easy to retain them. They are very demanding and picky. If they do not get they what they want in a company, they will find another company that is willing to provide all that they want. Employees used to adapt to what companies would give them but nowadays companies are adapting themselves around what their employees want. The corporate world is ever changing. That is why every company needs to be up-to-date so that they can give an A-game and be on top of everything.
Since both authors can relate to both age groups, they have written this article to describe the reasons behind Gen Y’s characteristics and allow older generations a chance to understand their younger counterparts. The article is written not towards Gen Y but instead is written for their critics. Since the article allows readers inside the lives of Gen Y members, it is directed at people who do not already understand this generation and all it has to offer to the world. The authors’ knowledge of the criticisms that Gen Y faces allows them to portray their purpose to intended audiences. They do all of this while remaining mindful of older generations that work full time and live busy lives by breaking the article up with headings and subheadings that allow readers to read only sections at a
It appears that Generation Y is executing the wishes that other generations of workers subdue, and are subsequently portrayed as a vocal group by default. As a result of millennials’ demands, various companies are now beginning to conform to the ideas this generation presents. As such, new policies are being implemented,
Boomer’s see millennial’s as having a short attention span which is not what millennial’s intend. If they don’t see a job working out, they are faster to jump ship than Boomer’s and that fearless attitude actually leverages them more power with their company. Sherry Buffington, co-author of Exciting Oz: How the New American Workforce Is Changing the Face of Business Forever and What Companies Must Do to Thrive, says that they have the upper hand because they are perfectly fine working dozens of different jobs in their lifetime. “In a survey conducted by IdeaPaint of 600 employed Millennials, 49 percent believe that poor management is dragging their company down; 45 percent attribute that to the lack or misuse of technology solutions.” (Avallon) This helps the reader to better understand the mentality of millennial’s. They are typically more tech savvy then their older bosses and feel they could make more of an impact if they were in charge. Millennial’s are hard-wired to think that time really is their most important resource. If they feel they aren’t being treated completely fair then they won’t hesitate about trying to find a new
“Bridging the Gaps” began by defining the three most dominant generations in the workforce: Baby Boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964), Generation X (those born between 1965 and 1981) and Generation Y (those born during or after 1982). Wilson stresses the importance of understanding each generation’s unique characteristics to take advantage of their strengths. This approach also minimizes confrontation when multiple generations work together. Wilson lists characteristics such as being entrepreneurial, ardent about social causes, and independent as similarities between Baby Boomers and Generation Y, while Baby Boomers and Generation X both value loyalty, focus on finances and believe in a hierarchy of order. Lastly, Generations X and Y are flexible and technologically savvy.
We are experiencing in our work force a changing of the guard, currently there are three generational groups that make up our workforce: The Baby Boomers, Generation X, and the Millennials, who for the past few years have begun to work together. However, what we are discovering is that because of the time frame of their births and the life altering affects during those times, it has influenced the values and objectives of each of these groups, ultimately affecting their ethics and values, in the work place. We will continue to discover the differences in each of these generations, their outlooks, and the steps that business leaders are taking to evolve their training programs and procedures to accommodate these changes and maintain or increase the ethical standards of their companies. Many business leaders are striving to ensure that a generational divide does not lead to miscommunication, hindered performance, and most importantly, put their company at risk.
They have idealistic tendencies and are extremely willing to sacrifice personal time in order to achieve success in the workplace. Even though Baby Boomers are typically seen as micromanagers, they are good at building collaborative relationships with their coworkers and networking. Many Baby Boomers feel that their life’s purpose is to work hard, respect the chain of authority and hierarchy in the workplace. This is due to the fact that Baby Boomers were brought up in a work atmosphere where the chain of command was always respected (Kapoor, Solomon, 2011). Baby Boomers also work very hard for promotions and believe in sacrificing personal for the sake of being successful; they started the ‘workaholic’ trend and believe in paying their dues and step-by-step promotion that comes with age and time worked at a company. They also like teamwork, collaboration, group decision-making and believe in loyalty toward their employers (Tolbize, 2008). Baby Boomers tend to stay with one company for the duration of their professional life.
By 2025, about 75% of the American workforce will be made up of Generation Y workers, said Emily Matchar, author of “Why Your Office Needs More Bratty Millennials.” Generation Y, also known as millennials, are those who were born within the years 1982 and 1999. Time management has become a persistent issue for people in the United States because of the lack of flexibility in the workforce. Work is taking over people’s lives. The current generation of workers tend not to demand because of the fear of unemployment; jobs are scarce these days. Generation Y workers have shown that they will not accept today’s hierarchical workplace, on the contrary, they will begin to change the workplace to their likings.
The Baby Boomer generation consists of those born between 1946 and 1964. Like the Veterans before them, Baby Boomers also shared significant, “life-defining social changes such as the civil rights movement,
Workers are often pitted against each other in the work place as a form of competition. One division that is commonly seen is gender and race, but there is also a divide concerning age that isn’t discussed as frequently. Baby Boomers are those who was born between 1946-1964, when WWII soldiers came back home, settled down and started the “Baby Boom”. While Millennials are those born around 1981-2000, and have a similar population size as Baby Boomers. In the workplace, Millennials are categorized as being bad workers due to how they were raised in sheltered lifestyles and require a different environment than the previous generation, but that is not accurate. Even though the two generations view work different, sometimes to the point of conflict,
As a matter of fact, the manner in which they handle their children at home, managing their expectations should be the actual case in the work places. The generation Y employee is a constrained bomb of ideas, innovations, and expectations which only then transforms to expectations. The point is, these young employees have abilities that lack capacities. So now they look unto the generation X, the management to feed these capacities, as much as they may do this in a shrewd manner definitive of their expectations (Vaiman & Vance, 2008) Ideally, the generation X should be ready to embrace change in whose case the models of change should be very instrumental to help them manage the generation Y and their ideas and suggestions of change. The synthesis of the two conflicts now becomes the fusion of cultures to end up with a stable understanding of procedures for the young employees and a modern inception and injection of modern ideas into the long held organization cultures,
Baby Boomers are the most powerful demographic group in history. Businesses thrives or fails based on their ability to keep pace with the likes and dislikes of this economic powerhouse known as the baby boomers. At 76 million strong, boomers have the influence to rule the marketplace and make sure they keep a place set just for them as the
Smola, Karen Wey, and Charlotte D. Sutton. "Generational Difference: Revisiting Generational Work Values for the New Millennium." Journal of Organizational Behavior 23 (2002): 363-82. JSTOR. Web. 28 Mar. 2012. .
Klobucher, T 2011, Characteristics of Generation 2020: Generations at Work, The Great Workplace Revolution, accessed 11 November 2013, http://www.thegreatworkplacerevolution.com/characteristics-of-generation-2020-generations-at-work/
For the first time in history, there are four generations of people working side by side in the workplace. Think about your place employment and the different people who work there. It is sometimes hard to get your point across to someone in a different age generation. This especially becomes a problem in the supervisor employee relationship. In order to effectively communicate with your peers, you have to understand the context in which they view the world. This problem is a real concern for managers. There has even been a Center for Generational Studies created.
Zemke, Ron. (2013). Generations at Work: Managing the Clash of Boomers, Gen Xers & Gen Yers in the workplace. Edition #2.