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ON THESE CHANGES

      Based on its 2015 survey of over 7,000 business and HR leaders in over 130 countries throughout the world, Deloitte has identified the greatest challenges for businesses today:

      ● Culture and engagement

      ● Leadership

      ● Learning and development11

      At the heart of every company lies its culture, which sets the tone for how the employees are treated (by both management and each other), which in turn sets the tone for how those employees treat customers. If employees feel disposable or poorly treated (particularly by senior leaders), they will reproduce those negative feelings in their interactions among themselves as well as those with clients. The converse also holds true: employees who feel valued will then spread that sentiment to others. Culture matters because it has such a strong effect on every transaction (both internal and external) relevant to a company, and managers who underestimate its importance do so at their peril.

      The link between culture and the issues of a multigenerational workplace is clear: when the company culture doesn't value the contributions of employees of all ages, the entire organization suffers. Smart company executives know that culture starts at the top and will focus on engaging employees of all generations to put their best and brightest ideas to work for the company. Management experts often debate whether culture creates engagement or engagement leads to culture. The “which comes first” discussion is irrelevant, though, as long as senior leaders understand the power of culture to create an age‐unbiased environment.

      But merely proclaiming “Now we're inclusive!” won't take a company very far. Without human capital processes in place to truly support a change in management philosophy, an organization can't accurately claim to be a welcoming and inclusive multigenerational workplace. Developing those processes requires an understanding of each generation's background, interests, and motivations (while still recognizing, of course, that such understandings take a back seat to awareness of individuals' needs). Let's take a close look at the characteristics and goals of each generation.

      Chapter 2

      DEFINING THE GENERATIONS

       We didn't have a generation gap. We had a generation Grand Canyon.

– Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman12

      No doubt you've come across many of the descriptions used for the various generations. Baby Boomers, Echo Boomers, Generation X, Generation Y, Silent Generation, Me Generation – these terms appear all over the place in the media, and everyone has some sense of what they mean. But most of us would have a hard time defining them precisely, and the lack of standardized definitions can make it difficult to have productive conversations that help bridge divides among different age groups. So let's start by defining our terms.

      WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY

      When describing generations, most people tend to focus on dates – that is, birth years. The usual practice is to lump into one generation everyone who was born between year X and year Y. Sure, that's a convenient way to draw the lines. The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, for example, specifically chooses “equal 20‐year age spans” when defining post–World War II generations because those groups align both “with typically published age groups” and “with levels of annual births.”13 But going by the calendar alone doesn't yield an accurate picture, because a generation is defined by much more than its birth dates.

      Broadly speaking, a generation can be characterized as “an identifiable group that shares birth years, age, location, and significant life events at critical developmental stages.”14 The Pew Research Center, a social‐science research organization that specializes in demographic research, points out that “a generation typically refers to groups of people born over a 15–20 year span” but adds that definitions of generations are ideally based on “a range of factors, including demographics, attitudes, historical events, popular culture, and prevailing consensus among researchers.”15 The Pew researchers go on to highlight three critical factors to consider when differentiating among multiple age groups:16

      1. Life cycle effect (or age effect): “When a life cycle effect is at play, differences between younger and older people are largely due to their respective positions in the life cycle.” This one is pretty easy to understand. Just think back to when you were a teenager (when you still lived at home and weren't responsible for many – or any! – bills) and compare that with what your life is like now (when you have a mortgage, a career, or a family – or all three!). No doubt you've experienced some shifts in your attitudes based on your stage of life. Childhood, adulthood, parenthood, retirement – each of those phases has distinct concerns and outlooks.

      2. Period effect: This manifests “when events and circumstances…as well as broader social forces…simultaneously impact everyone, regardless of age.” The Great Recession of 2007–2009 is one example of such an event that touched all segments of the population. Similarly, desegregation and the civil rights movement of the 1960s also yielded society‐wide effects.

      3. Cohort effect: This results from “unique historical circumstances that members of an age cohort experience, particularly during a time when they are in the process of forming opinions.” The Pew researchers highlight two types of cohort effects: those that “may be the result of a period effect an older generation experienced that subsequent generations did not” (for example, people who were alive on 9/11 experienced a cohort effect that people born after 9/11 did not) and those that “have an outsize effect on members of one generation” (for example, people who were in adolescence or young adulthood – two formative periods in life – during the Vietnam War experienced it differently from people who were much older or much younger than them at that time).

      As you can see, when defining a generation, so much more data than birth dates must be considered! In addition to the birth dates and the three effects described earlier, other factors (such as ethnicity, religion, and marital status, to name just a few) can play a role, too. But this chapter isn't intended to provide a comprehensive analysis of generational factors and definitions (I'll leave that to the demographic researchers and other experts!). My goal here is to provide an overview of the frameworks used to define generations – and a sense of how tricky it can be to come up with rigid definitions – so the rest of this book launches from a starting point that's accessible to all readers.

      So with all of that in mind, let's talk about the different generations found in today's workplace!

      THE BIG THREE – AND A NEWCOMER

      First off, I'm going to set some parameters. It's true that there are some pre–Baby Boomers (e.g., the Greatest Generation, the Silent Generation) collecting paychecks these days. But those folks are so few in number that most discussions about the generations in today's workplace usually omit them. I'm going to follow that trend myself and focus on the generations that make up the bulk of today's workers: Baby Boomers, Generation Xers, Millennials, and Generation Zers.17

      As far as birth dates go, only the Baby Boomers have numbers that are pretty much universally accepted: 1946–1964. In fact, theirs is the only generation that's officially defined by the US Census Bureau, as one journalist found out when he called that office.18 If you ask anyone about dates for other generations, you'll get plenty of different responses. They're usually not far off from each other, though, and tend to vary by only a few years – further proof of my earlier “everyone has some sense of what they mean” statement.

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