Generation gap and its effect on Organizational behavior and performance

In today’s context at office environments it is evident that the level of diversity of the work force is immense. This work force diversity has its pros and cons which affect the organizational performance in numerous ways. Generation gap and its effect on Organizational behavior and performance will be discussed in this write up.

Before categorizing the work force in the organization according to the well defined theories such as; Baby boomers, Generation X, Generation Y categorization can be done as below on a very layman basis,


· Employees with long tenure in the company with no professional qualifications, very loyal to   the company

· Young qualified professionals joined the company as senior level employees

There is a noticeable clash in between above mentioned 2 levels due to the generation gap and its characteristics which creates mismatch among the behavioral patterns of 2 levels.

Main Characteristics of category 1

Employees with long tenure in the company with no professional qualifications, very loyal to the company

· Long tenure in the company

· Very loyal to the company

· ‘Live to work’ attitude / workaholics

· Not professionally qualified

· Comparatively not tech savvy

· Work long hours

· Poor work-life balance

· Not active on Social Media


Main Characteristics of category 2

Young qualified professionals joined the company as senior level employees

· Young and professionally qualified

· Not loyal to the employer

· Tech savvy

· Good work-live balance

· Open and ready for new opportunities

· Social median is a part of the life

At work, generational differences can affect everything, including recruiting, building teams, dealing with change, motivating, managing, and maintaining and increasing productivity.

Think of how generational differences, relative to how people communicate, might affect misunderstandings, high employee turnover, difficulty in attracting employees and gaining employee commitment and engagement.

Research indicates that people communicate based on their generational backgrounds. Each generation has distinct attitudes, behaviors, expectations, habits and motivational buttons. Learning how to communicate with the different generations can eliminate many major confrontations and misunderstandings in the workplace and the world of business.

Above discussed generation gap can be comprehensively and theoretically analyzed as below;

· Veterans (1922 - 1945)

· Baby boomers (1946 - 1964)

· Generation X (1965 - 1980)

· Generation Y (1981 - 2000)



Carefully looking at the 4 generations and the characteristics of those it is noticeable that the way members of the each generation are looking at work and things are different to one another. Therefore it is highly unlikely the possibility of members from different generations work together in teams with minimum clashes.

Work force diversity has 2 levels;

· Surface level diversity

· Deep level diversity

Even some times it is debatable that the use of above said 2 levels of diversity could eliminate the issues of generation gap but it is not pragmatic at the inception to identify the 2 levels accurately.

In generation Y there are Machiavellianism personalities and Narcissism personalities compared to other generations where human emotions do not count much in their behavior.

Due to the Generation gap and it is consequences mostly effected element would be Motivation which leads to so many other over all negative issues.

Below chart further describes the characteristics of each generation in depth.


*TBD – To be discovered

How Generation gap affects the Motivation?

Generation gap creates detachment among employees in the same organization due to lack of respect and ego matters over each other.

Ex – An employee of the company requested an internal transfer just because the newly appointed her superior is younger than her.

Inter personnel relationships among the members are very poor due to the generation gap which brings down the team cohesion and creates alienated feeling which leads to disappointment and quitting the company / job.

When the getting alone with work colleagues is poor it is always evident that validating each other contribution is also low which is a negative sign for the performance of the overall company.

To begin to understand how individuals in different generations act and react, it is vital to first understand oneself and personally held mental models. This mindset ties into Senge’s personal mastery discipline, which says that people constantly need to evaluate themselves in order to grow. Whether at a family gathering or in the workplace, how should a leader manage inner-generational groups with conflicting work ethics, dissimilar values and idiosyncratic styles? How to get them to stop snarling at each other? How to motivate them to get along or work together? Senge’s five disciplines, which include mental models and personal mastery, along with additional research provide much insight into how to help employees overcome generational biases in a professional setting.

Every generation has created its own commotion as it has entered into the adult working world. And, every generation says the same things about other generations; “They don’t get it,” or “They have it so much easier than we did.”

Above mentioned scenarios and situations between generations leads to affect motivation negatively which ultimately effect the company performance and slow down the growth with high staff turnover, low productivity, poor brand image, negative word of mouth, waste of resources, ect.

In present context demographic changes have also led to the challenges companies face today. Baby boomers are heading towards retirement, generation X is often feeling tired or overworked, and generation Y doesn’t seem aligned to the values of previous generations. Before the 1980s, employees valued stability. However, the great downsizing and corporate transformation of the 1980s destroyed employee loyalty to companies. So, when the dot com boom of the 1990s produced a surge of job opportunities, job-hopping became a standard part of a person’s career.

Some researches says that major events happened in the world too shaped the behavioral patterns and characteristics of each generation, refer the below tabulation for more elaboration.

Main events faced by generations over time:

Generation	Main Events	Characteristics
Veterans/ Traditionalists	The Great Depression, World War II	Conservative, disciplined, sense of obligation
Baby Boomers	Witnesses of the Cold War, Civil Rights Struggle	Patient, committed, loyal
Generation X	Technological development, fall of the Berlin Wall	Empowered, optimistic, practical/pragmatic, adaptable/responsive to change, self-reliant, individualistic
Generation Y	Witnesses of the war on terrorism, technological boom	Ambitious, creative, emphasize work-life balance, informal, technologically savvy, pro- teamwork

Social media and its affect on Generation gap and organizational performance

Social media has become an essential tool in most of the people’s life nowadays, if used properly it could bring in good productive results but addiction to social media could destroy the productivity. Today office environment is also invaded by social media, some organizations has social media friendly culture where as in some organizations it is anti social media and prohibited using social media during office hours.

Generation Y is very active on Social media and for them it is an essential element in life (Like an Identity card) They keep posting status / Pictures which keeps them active and live on Social media.

People belongs to generation X and baby boomers argues that using social media during office hours could slow down the work and dilute the efficiency of the employees. This is an agreeable statement up to an extent because if there is no control or mechanism to monitor the social media involvement.

Ex – Managing director (Baby boomer) of a company stated in an open forum that “If they cannot commit to work during 8 hour office time and avoid FB at office how can we place confidence on them because occupation their bread and butter’ if they cannot be serious about it I don’t think they are suitable for the job”

Generation Y will look at above statement as a very demoralizing / autocratic saying which will leads to de motivation. Generation X and baby boomers will look at the above statement as a fair saying and positively take it.


Perception of different generations about using social media at office is different, in some companies access to Social media is Blocked and the reason given to the action is to save time and increase productivity, but with the smart phone any one can log in to social media at any time therefore blocking of Social media access won’t help. Also there is a tendency to somehow do it if something is restriction.

Ideal solution is to allocate a monitored social media time Quota (15-30 minutes a day) for employees of the company. This will create a win-win situation and employees will motivate to work, Perceived organizational support concept in employees mind can be tackled positively by doing little non commercial activities as such.

In a conclusion note it is interesting to study the generation gap and its behavioral nature when comes to working environment. Successful leaders will know how to manager organizational interest alignment among different generations and achieve.

 
Dhanushka Wijeyekoon