Stop Managing Generations. Start Managing People.

The useful part

For decades, workplace diversity has largely been discussed through categories such as gender, race, culture and religion. Yet another form of diversity is becoming impossible to ignore: age and generation. Walk into a workplace today and it is increasingly possible to find a recent graduate working alongside someone with two or three decades of professional experience.

How it works

• The biggest mistake workplaces can make is to confuse generational diversity with generational stereotyping.
• Generation Z employees are entering organisations with new expectations about technology, flexibility and purpose, while Millennials and Generation X employees continue to occupy important professional and...
• Older employees, meanwhile, carry institutional knowledge and experience that cannot be acquired overnight.
• These descriptions may occasionally contain fragments of truth, but they become dangerous when organisations begin treating them as facts about every individual.
• Different generations have grown up in different social, economic and technological environments.

What to take from it

Instead, organisations often turn generational diversity into a problem. We hear that Gen Z has a short attention span. When a young employee is described as "impatient" simply because they...

Example or evidence

• A more experienced employee may prefer detailed discussions based on professional experience and established processes.

Details worth keeping

Millennials are portrayed as demanding constant feedback. Older employees are assumed to resist technology. The conflict begins when preferences are turned into assumptions.