[Update: A newer article, "Working Beyond Five Generations in the Workplace", was published in February, 2015. ]
From a recent conversation with Jeanne Meister, we are facing a new future in terms of demographics at work: we will soon have five generations in the workplace at once. In prior years, we have had three or four generations at a time with some but not vast differences in work behavior.
Today people are living and working longer leading to this new reality. What’s more, this phenomenon goes beyond the US into China, Brazil, Russia and elsewhere. The significance is in terms of types of workforce behaviors, what motivates employee engagement, and the tools and practices they need to interact. It this mixed, multi-generational environment is a new diversity challenge for HR organizations everywhere.
I first came across the work of Ms. Meister and her co-author, Karie Willyerd, The 2020 Workplace from an eye-opening statement (to me) in a Harvard Business Review article titled Mentoring Millennials: “In four years Millennials—the people born between 1977 and 1997—will account for nearly half the employees in the world.” In March, I invited her to come share her expertise on our IBM internal Author Talk sessions where we explored many more issues about working with multiple generations.
Most of us recognize that Millennials are the new generation of employees with very different workforce behaviors who not just familiar with collaboration tools but expect their work environment to allow or even encourage them to use these tools. In one of my presentations on generations, first realize that they are not all young 20-somethings fresh out of college. By 2015 the earliest of this generation will be around 35, holding roles in middle management, expertise leadership, or executives. Also, while the median age of the working population in the US is around 36.7, per Ms. Meister, in emerging markets, it is closer to 26 years old, with a larger younger population of workers.
The generations prior to Millennials are referred to in the US as Gen X (since 1965), Baby Boomers (since 1943), and the one referred to by various names: Traditionalists, Silent, G.I., or Greatest Generation (since 1930). Without ample population statistics in some places, it isn’t as simple to categorize in some of the emerging nations. India—which became a nation in 1948—for example, has at least three: the Traditional (since 1948), the Non-Traditional (since 1969), and Gen Y (since 1981). China’s generations span per decade.
As always, demographics are generalizations and stereotypes with the purpose to understand overall trends, not specific situations. Also, just because you may be born in an era, you may or may not exhibit the behaviors of the generation. The Pew Internet & American Life project, for example, has a simple quiz that asks “How Millennial Are You?” I’ve heard responses from people of all generations that attest to ‘how millennial’ they score; and even ones of Millennials who don’t score high at all. It is not intended to be a perfect measure, but a simple yardstick to estimate if you think or live in a similar way.
In similar vein, the greatest growth in social network and Web use has been among the older generations in the US. This is based on data from Ms. Meister, as well as comScore, and the TNS Digital Life survey. This means that the generations are catching up in terms of basic capabilities, even as they exhibit different interests and emphases.
Getting back to the main issue of five generations at work: what are the implications? You can certainly pick from the classic topics of HR (hiring practices, talent development, collaboration, learning methods, etc.) but on a more fundamental level I think the main question lies in: Do employees understand how work is done differently in different generations? Do employees understand customer needs, interaction and work styles from different generations?
We face as many Black Swans from the scenario of a generation not understanding how people work using the latest social and collaboration tools, as we do of people who use these tools do not know or recall what work is or was like without them?
Take a look me: I’m Gen X and have worked in startups as well as mega companies; I have worked in an office for 7 years and now remotely for a good 15 years; and while being in a global organization, my experience of really working on a regular basis with people outside North America expanded dramatically since 2004. I have a vague image of what it is to work day in and day out in the same single physical office building as many others, and the upsides and downsides of doing so.
Understanding needs to go both ways. As part of an internal enablement and training team, I need to try to understand work in scenarios so I can learn how to explain the differences, pros and cons of each. Similarly, in working with the folks on our China team, I’m learning a wider view of cultural dynamics and work behaviors.
The pressure on businesses these days are leading to greater demands for agility in terms of products offered, business models operated, and partnerships; interactivity with increasingly well-connected and technology versed customers and institutions; and thorough connectivity due to globalized partnerships, markets and dependencies. They push the demands on some fundamental capabilities in an organization: the ability of individuals and teams to connect and communicate across the organization, reshape teams, workgroups, organizational units, processes and models, and learn and respond to changing needs.
Being in the business of Social Business, I may be biased, but most of these are the same fundamental capabilities that start with and can grow out of the use of online collaborative tools. This implies that to keep up with the demands of business, we (all generations) would need to become used to working in this way.
Some generations may have a natural advantage of having grown up interacting with others in this way. However, while they may be familiar with how they work in personal scenarios, they may not yet understand how social collaboration tools work in the enterprise. I say this because this is still new to most industries, and everyone is trying to catch up to what this means for their organization.
Collaboration tools are still the equivalent of hammers and saws; while you may need them to build a house, you need to learn about the principles of design, architecture, utility and project management to be able to do this over many times, efficiently, and with changing needs as well. As many social business experts will remind you, the tools by themselves are a small part of helping people collaborate; you need to understand how to apply them correctly per the behaviors of the people involved. And when you need to this over and over, or in scale, you need a well thought out program to do so.
A different element that has come out of working collaboratively is the emerging concept of Social Learning. In a simplistic view, this is about employees learning from each other. More so, what is possible is that employees learn in a pragmatic and current fashion about any subject as it is practiced in the workplace, with the current knowledge, interpretation and help of the practitioners.
This goes beyond traditional learning which focuses on knowledge that has been collected, processed, vetted and finally taught to people in traditional teacher-student scenarios. Not only is the method of delivery different, but so is the currency of knowledge, as well as the skills people need to learn. This moves people from being able to consume knowledge, remember and recall well-defined methods to trying new skills: deciphering what methods work as they are change and grow, deconstruct what they are hearing and distill knowledge, develop relationship networks and mentoring, and most importantly, teach it to others. In practice getting this to happen is a lot more involved, and must be built into how employees are compensated and departments organized.
Social learning is therefore, not about finding a new way to deliver all the well-prepared materials you have through collaboration, but a change in how people learn entirely. It shouldn’t surprise you that this is also one of the oldest forms of learning: think back of the academies of ancient Greece where students spent as much time debating topics with each other as did practice leaders did ‘teaching’. Yes, you will still need to learn a lot of well-defined existing knowledge to have enough before you can participate, but know that learning does not end with books alone.
This is where multiple generations are crucial. The experiences, knowledge and cultural familiarity that each generation carries can be best delivered through social learning. It is not simply about mentoring between older people who have more experience in their line of business, but also learning from other peers in other areas and younger folks the how things may work differently in different environments.
What I’m talking about here is about being prepared. Being ready, both on a people level as well as an organizational process level, to be able to allow insight about any piece of work—as opposed to just transporting work around in a process—to flow freely across multiple generations. To do so, means getting people on the same plane of how to interact and collaborate; encouraging people to build their digital eminence; encouraging and rewarding people who help to build peer relations (or ‘mentoring’ if you prefer); and augmenting or transitioning your learning environment towards a social learning method. These are non-trivial factors that span beyond HR departments alone that need to be built into the fabric of organizations to allow them to become competitive, agile connected businesses.
