Today’s business environment is the first one in which five generations of people are likely to be working at the same time. The differences in age could create conflict between the younger and older employees.
However, the differences between employee ages should be cherished and used as a source of information to help sell company products. Managing older workers will be important as younger people take over the leadership role in all organizations.11 Older employees (such as Traditionalists and Baby Boomers) are often the mentors for teaching younger (Gen X and Y) employees.
Older workers can teach younger workers about the culture of the company and how things normally get done. However, Gen X and Y employees have been born in the technology era. That being so, the younger employees can teach older employees about topics such as social media marketing techniques. So younger employees can become reverse mentors and teach the older employees how to better use technology in the workplace.
Case Questions
1. What are the traditional areas of discrimination the human resources department normally helps to resolve?
2. How do equal opportunity, diversity, and generational issues intersect?
3. What generation do you belong to? Do the characteristics describe yourself?
4. What differences do you experience between yourself and a coworker or teacher) from a different generation?
5. What potential discrimination issues do you think exist between employees of different generations?