The United States economy has experienced highs and lows throughout the years. These changes affect everyone in one way or another. The U.S. workforce is not exempt from feeling the effects of the economy. Many individuals across the nation have reassessed their career and personal goals due to financial hardships. One major trend developing is that individuals are beginning careers earlier, and ending careers later. The good old days of retiring at sixty-five are replaced with worrying about health care costs and retirements plans, with no retirement date in sight. Many parents are unable to foot the bill for their college-aged children, so the workforce has also seen a jump in young adults entering into the workforce.
Nationwide, organizations are witnessing for the first time ever, four different generations working side by side. These generations have been labeled as the veterans or the traditionalist group (born before 1945), the baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1964), generation X (born between 1965 and 1980), and generation Y (born after 1980). As a manager it can be quite challenging to manage four different generations of workers. All four generations have different strengths and weaknesses, so it takes a great manager to merge all of them into one productive team. To be an effective manager of such diverse groups, it takes understanding and appreciating the qualities each generation offers. This review analyzes current research available describing the differences between each generation, how to motivate each generation, and how to effectively merge the generations into one cohesive group.
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN GENERATIONS
Currently, in the United States, there are over 1 million workers that are 75 years of age o...
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...orce earlier it is a fact of life that managers will encounter a multigenerational workforce at some point. Organizations need to prepare management to be able to handle such diverse populations.
It was somewhat surprising to review the literature, and discover most all researchers agree that different generations of employees have different needs and are motivated differently. It is important to note that while researchers agree about generational generalizations, they are just generalizations. A manager needs to be aware of the generalizations about each generation to help them understand, but be careful not to let it become a stereotype and affect the way they approach that employee. The main point is that every employee brings something valuable to the workplace, and managers need to be aware of how to utilize those strengths to the organization’s benefit.
With the current change in demographics throughout the workforce, organizations are feeling the effects of a larger percentage of baby boomers retiring and a large percentage of millennial new entrants. The words used to describe millennial employees, “spoiled, trophy kids, ambitious”, seem to be as everlasting as the constructive and negative perspectives attached to them. Many can debate on the entitlement of these employees within an organization, how these employees can be groomed and managed to better fit the organization, the positive and negative attributes they bring into the workplace, and how the preceding can benefit or derail the effectiveness of an organization. Nonetheless, a harder debate, comes about in denying that organizations must adjust to and integrate these employees into the workforce.
The existing U.S. population is over 315 million and rising. In the year 2030, 72 million Americans will be 65 or older, a 50 percent change in age demographics since the year 2000. The change is primarily due to the aging baby boomers, who were born at the end of World War II. Americans are living longer than ever befo...
2) List and define the generations represented in your organization. Are there any cultural tensions present among the generations in your organization? What is your organization doing to bring value to your organization from the generations represented? Where I work we have Boomers, GenXers, and Millennials. There are some cultural tensions that are present in the work place. An example would be most of the managers are Boomers or GenXers which means they have different standards of how things should be done. The company that I work for is bringing value to our organization by valuing what each generation has to offer.
Ron Alsop, in his article “The ‘Trophy Kids’ Go to Work” explains that the millennial generation, 'Trophy Kids,' are noticed how they do in their job and market. The millennium generation is shaking the workplace. The millennium, a polarized generation that has been admired and criticized, is serious about changing work environments to meet their needs. Currently, employers are facing the grand challenge of integrating Millennium into the workplace three generations, people with very different attitudes and behaviors. The author wrote a convincing essay from the essay’s composition.
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,
Over the last twenty years, the make-up of the workplace has changed dramatically due to age diversity. In today’s workforce, we have four generations of workers: traditionalists (silent generation), baby boomers, Generation X (Gen X’ers), and Millennials (Gen Y). The characteristics of the four generations are important to organizations for several reasons. Effectively managing human capital is what separates great companies from their mediocre counterparts. Understanding the value system of each generation may help management motivate and develop key behaviors needed in the workplace. Furthermore, understanding how each generations communicate may help management coach, develop, and lead these diverse groups of people. In this paper, the
We now have five generations in the workplace. Formally the workplace consisted of two groups the old timers and known it all young hotshots. For the first time in history, there are five generations working side by side. They are the traditional generation (born pre – 1945), Baby Boomers (born 1946-1964), Generation X (born 1965-1980), Generation Y (born 1981-1995), and the Linkster generation (born after 1995). Knowing each generation characteristics helps immensely in attracting, engaging, retaining, developing, and advancing its members. Together they represent a vast pool of talent and skill, the most crucial resource that organizations have.
In the years to come, the multigenerational workforce will have a great influence on the organizational hierarchy, organizational work ethic, work style and relationships and also on the ways of managing change. The literature suggests that there will be huge impact on two specific areas of Human resource policy and employee development which are Retention and Motivation which will be result of differing perspectives and experiences, diverse motivators and strongly held attitudes. To successfully retain and leverage talent of all generations, the following changes in company culture, HR policies, Benefits and programs need to be made as suggested by studies. Every generation is either attracted or repelled by the work environment of the organization. According to the findings of an exploratory study about the dimensions of employee fit with work environments and the impact of employee job satisfaction and turnover
This can often lead to employers firing, or not considering the younger generation when conducting the hiring process. Researchers believe there are several key reasons why employers feel this way. While growing up, Millennials were coached and expect their employers to be their coaches, rather than their bosses (O'Donnell, J. (2015, August 4). The Millennial generation is known for seeking professional development opportunity from their employers, many employers do not believe that it is their responsibility to financially support the development of their employees (O'Donnell, J. (2015, August 4). Millennials work to live, not live to work. The younger generation tends to push for work flexibility and only work within strict allotted time periods. This unwilling attitude to work longer than expected is undesirable to employers (O'Donnell, J. (2015, August 4). Millennials want “fun” working environments and often expect employers to provide desirable benefits (O'Donnell, J. (2015, August 4). These benefits may include amenities like gym memberships, healthy meals on-site, and in-house parties (O'Donnell, J. (2015, August 4). All of these “new age” concepts of what a work place should be like is earning the Millennial a bad reputation to employers. Regardless, that is no reason for an employer to overlook a job candidate or even fire an employee
All three articles in this article explore generational perspectives and values in the workplace. Two of the articles go into depth regarding the specific characteristics which are common in each generation. These characteristics and values are important in understanding how multiple generations can work cohesively in the workplace. All three of these articles are in alignment that for the first time in history we are seeing four extremely different generations working together and that this is causing conflicts. Companies that can embrace all generations, championing diversity and inclusion are bound to be more successful. The purpose of these articles is exactly the same. They all explore the different generational views and how to
As the young generation transitions to the workplace it can be difficult to accommodate them with the older generation. The truth is that the workplace is in constant change. For one the new generation is imposing their way in the workplace. With the new trends of demographics in the workplace, the older generation has mixed feelings about young workers. The concerns about cross generational conflict at work can discourage young workers, decrease productivity, and create a tense environment
The existence of different generations in a workforce can cause several obstacles in terms of employee performance and rewarding a workforce effectively and efficiently.
...The importance of the generational mix within an organisation is that it brings about inclusivity and helps generate new innovative ideas that could bring the organisation to its sustained competitive advantage. With each age group with its expectations by interacting with one another, there is knowledge and experience exchange.
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.
Every time a generation starts to leave the workforce, and a new generation starts to step in managers face key challenges. In the near future Baby Boomers will steadily leave the workforce, and managers will have key challenges to address in terms of gender and generational supervision. There are numerous issues that managers will face in the future with their employees including: employees expecting flexible of schedules, finding talented candidates, dealing with the constant update in technology, and many more. The following are all key challenges that future managers will face in my eyes, starting with employee’s expectations.