Generational Differences In The Workplace: Personal Values, Behaviors, And Popular Beliefs

Abstract

Working age Americans in 2008 fell into four main generations, a generation being defined as an identifiable group that shares birth years, age, location, and significant life events at critical developmental stages, divided by five to seven years into: the first wave, core group, and last wave (Kupperschmidt, 2000). There are at least two views regarding generational differences in the workplace. The first presumes that shared events influence and define each generation (Zemke, Raines, & Filipczak, 2000) and that while individuals in different generations are diverse, they nevertheless share certain thoughts, values, and behaviors because of the shared events. Furthermore, these values, reactions, and behaviors presumably differ across generations. The alternative view postulates that although there might be variations throughout an employee’s life cycle or career stage, ultimately employees may be “generic” (Jurkiewicz & Brown, 1998, p.29) in what they want from their jobs and trying to bifurcate employees by generations may be misguided (Jorgensen , 2003; Jurkiewicz & Brown, 1998; Yang & Guy, 2006). In this paper, the four generations of American workers are described, generational differences and similarities are identified, and implications for employers are discussed. 1