HR Response to Intergenerational Differences

Human Resources With the baby boomers, Generation X, and the millennials, there are three generations in the modern workforce. While there have always been multigenerational workforces, these three generations in particular have specific and pronounced differences reflecting the rapidly-changing world and their place in that world. In the past, it was reasonable that one generation would be more or less like its predecessors in the workforce, but that is not the case today and this poses some unique challenges for the human resources profession.

One of the biggest generational differences is with the role that work plays in one's life. Millennials in particular seek work that is fulfilling, and they do not see work as something that simply is to be tolerated in order to pay the bills. Baby boomers may have been able to accept a good-paying job they disliked in exchange for this pay and security, but millennials and to a lesser extent Gen X have seen that such security does not really exist.

As such, they understand that any position is impermanent, and that they are unlikely to spend their entire career at one company with a pension waiting at the end. As such, they want other things from their work, and personal fulfillment is one of those things. It is a lot harder to convince a millennial to take a mundane job on the promise of job security and good pay, because they view such promises as not being reliable, and instead want jobs that interest them.

This ties into the value that work plays in people's lives. For millennials, their reality is that there is only limited separation between work and personal time. Technology has all but removed the formal barrier between work and personal time - their bosses expect them to answer texts and emails at all hours. As such, the work itself has to be satisfying in way that it not experienced by previous generations (Smola & Sutton, 2002).

For the human resources practitioner, the expectations that people have for work between the different generations manifests in many ways. There were always some differences -- the benefits packages desired by those near retirement have always been different from the packages desired by those starting a young family. These differences seem to have been exacerbated by the strong differences in the value systems of different generations. First, recruiting requires a different message.

One can attract a boomer or a Gen Xer with the promise of security -- the latter group being old enough to be worried about ageism at this point -- but a millennial wants the challenge, growth and fulfillment aspects of the job. Beyond recruiting, there are some stark differences with respect to training. The younger the worker, the more receptive they are likely to be to self-directed online training.

They are more technology-savvy, for one thing, but they are also more accustomed to that type of learning than older workers who were educated before the days of online courses. Job evaluations are also likely to be significantly different between generations, given that the younger the employee the less interest they are likely to have in formality. The culture of the organization is also going to be affected -- significantly- by generational differences.

There are likely to be clashes between employees because the value systems of different generations clash so significantly. When one generation values stability and company loyalty, and another generation has become more mercenary -- ironically, because they noticed how misplaced the loyalty of the boomers was -- then there are.