BY Kris Foster

There’s an elephant in the room, just sitting in the corner. Funny that no one mentions it, because it’s pretty obvious and we see it everyday in the workplace. The elephant this time is the generation gap in the office.

Linda Duxbury

“We tend to view the world from our own generational perspective, so we don’t understand other perspectives,” explains Linda Duxbury, a professor in the Sprott School of Business and one of Canada’s most accomplished researchers, writers and speakers on work-life balance.

Obviously there are different age groups in the workplace and clearly they all have different perspectives on life. But what we don’t appreciate – the elephant that we don’t talk about – is that these different perspectives extend into our careers and work life, and translate into different work ethics, ambitions and ways of dealing with job stress. This impacts the way we work and interact with each other.

“We are a product of the times in which we grew up. Our attitudes, values, what we want from life, what we want from our job, what we want from our community are all really influenced by our circumstances while growing up and by what our parents believed in,” explains Duxbury.

“Each group views the world completely differently. It’s actually a form of diversity. When we see that someone is a different gender or a different ethnic background than us, we anticipate that there may be some challenges communicating. But when we see that someone is the same gender or the same race, we assume that when they act differently from us it’s because they are either stupid or difficult,” says Duxbury.

Right now there are four distinct generations in the workplace: the Veteran Generation, the Baby Boomers, Generation X and Generation Y (a generation known by many names). Recognizing the diversity that these generations represent and understanding the different career paths and consequent career hurdles faced by each generation will help improve the work atmosphere.

The Veteran Generation

This is the oldest generation in the workplace. If you were born before 1946 you are a card-carrying member of the Veteran Generation. The formative influences on this group are the Depression (their parents lived through it), World War II and the post-war reconstruction.

Duxbury describes this generation as Cleaver-esque. “You had a single male worker, a wife at home, four children and economic prosperity. This group believed if you worked hard, were loyal and dependable you were looked after. They had jobs for life.”

During the economic prosperity after the war, the veterans were “making up for lost time,” as Duxbury says, “and they reproduced madly – 4.1 children per family at the peak of the baby boom.”

A birth rate of 2.1 is required for replacement. “This high birth rate created a lot of the conditions that caused many of the problems or issues with respect to a buyers’ market for labour,” Duxbury notes. The Veteran Generation was the last to experience a true sellers’ market for labour.

The Baby Boomers

This generation is simply known as the Boomers. Technically, members of this group were born between 1946 and 1964. The shift from a sellers’ market to a buyers’ market for labour coincided with this generation. “When we had the Boomers we had about twice as many qualified people for every job on the market,” states Duxbury.

The formative influence on the Boomers is that they grew up in a time of economic prosperity. Whether it’s true or not, the Boomers are associated with the “sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll” of the ‘60s and ‘70s. For the most part, Boomers are optimistic and belong to a culture of entitlement. “After all, the Boomers make up 58 percent of Canada’s labour market, so whatever we want we get because we are in positions of control,” says Duxbury.

Judging by the number of 60th birthdays being celebrated these days, it is safe to say that a number of Boomers are closing in on retirement age and will be leaving their careers in the near future.

Generation X

Generation X, a term popularized by Canadian author Douglas Coupland in the 1990s, includes anyone born between 1961 and 1974. Duxbury explains Generation X’s job market as follows: “Members of Generation X followed this huge cohort, the Boomers, into the labour market just when the labour market tanked. When those born in 1961 were trying to get their first jobs we hit a recession, followed by a jobless recovery, followed by another recession. So there was tremendous competition for jobs in this particular group. They had trouble getting permanent work and they had trouble keeping permanent work.”

Members of Generation X are often portrayed in the media as apathetic cynics who are over-educated and underachieving. Another term closely linked with this generation is McJob – a low-paying job with little stimulation and few prospects. This is certainly not a flattering portrayal of a generation, but these characteristics as a generational response to a point in time are justified. To put it simply, Generation X was short changed by demography.

Generation Y, Millennials, Nexus Generation

Born in 1975 and beyond, and known by many names, this is the youngest generation in the work force. Those born between 1974 and 1976 are “cuspers” and are still feeling the ripple effects of what Generation X experienced. But individuals in this generation see the light at the end of the tunnel and know things are getting better in the job market. However, this generation also saw what the job market did to their parents.

“They saw their parents downsized, they saw their parents go on stress leave, they saw their parents take Prozac and they saw their parents get divorced. And they say, ‘I will never make that mistake. I will never put my job ahead of my life.’ They don’t believe in the concept of loyalty,” Duxbury explains.

Throughout their whole lives the Millennials have been challenged by their parents and teachers to have opinions and ideas and to logically be able to argue their cause.

“They don’t take things at face value, they want to argue them and understand them. The older generations see that as being too aggressive and way too cocky. It’s not, it’s just how different generations see each other.”

This generation will witness the transition back to a sellers’ labour market. Consider two elements that will contribute to this transition: Canada currently has a birth rate of 1.5, well short of the needed replacement rate of 2.1 – a birth rate that high hasn’t existed since 1968; and the Boomers are reaching retirement age. These two factors will contribute to there being more jobs than qualified people to fill them.

Catching the bus and boiling frogs

Beyond awareness it is important to understand the circumstances faced by each generation; this helps to explain why they act, or react, the way they do. Duxbury uses two analogies.

Think about the job market in terms of catching the bus where the seats are the jobs. The people who get to the bus stop first get the best seats. If you are trying to catch the bus at rush hour you might get stuck with a less-than-desirable seat, you might have to stand or you might not even get on the bus.

“The people born between 1947 and 1958 have the good seats on the bus, the early Boomers. Their seats are so good they don’t appreciate what it’s like on the rest of the bus. In fact, their seats are so good they are going to ride around a couple times,” Duxbury explains.

Those who were born towards the end of the 1950s got seats with rips that were held together with duct tape. But at least they were still sitting.

By the time Generation X was ready to catch the bus, there was only standing room available.

“These people didn’t get good jobs,” explains Duxbury. “A lot of those people born throughout the ‘60s have been on and off a number of buses just to go home. So their attitude towards riding a bus is not as good as the people who got the good seats.”

With more passengers than seats, the bus fare increased. But you couldn’t complain because there were many people who were willing to pay higher fares just to get on the bus. Comparatively, you couldn’t complain about increased workloads, because there were many people who would take on the heavy workloads just to have a job.

With so many people willing to ride on a dirty bus with litter on the floor and rips on the seats, the condition of the bus only got worse; it didn’t have to improve.

“There were tens of thousands of Boomers competing for a promotion. So the employers could do whatever they wanted. They could talk about the importance of people, but manage money and cut budgets. That’s the condition of the bus deteriorating,” Duxbury articulates.

This brings us to Duxbury’s second analogy, boiling frogs.

“A large part of our workforce, Generation X and the Boomers, are boiling frogs,” explains Duxbury.

If you throw a frog into a pot of boiling water, the frog will jump out. It is as simple as that. No one questions the frog’s rationale for not wanting to stay in a pot of boiling water. But if you put a frog into a pot of room-temperature water and turn the heat up gradually the frog will stay in there until it dies.

“When the younger frogs come along and put their feet in the water they say ‘Are you nuts? It’s hot,’” says Duxbury. “The older frogs who have habituated over 15-20 years to the higher temperature say, ‘What is wrong with these young frogs?’”

Apply this analogy to the workplace. The Millennials see the workplace as a boiling pot of water and there is no way they will stay in an environment like that. After all, they saw what that work environment did to their parents. The Boomers and Generation X have been in the workplace for so long as it continued to change that they don’t realize that they are in boiling water and haven’t noticed how bad work conditions have gotten.

“It’s not like it happened overnight. We did it very gradually over 15 years – workloads kept increasing and increasing. To the extent to which their expectations are out of whack and they really don’t understand why the younger generations won’t accept this work environment.”

With all of this occurring in the workplace, contentious situations will arise. The Boomers see the youngest generation as lazy. Generation X thinks the youngest generation are spoiled brats. Generation X wants the Boomers to quit because they think the Boomers are impeding their career progress and job security. Generation Y feels that no one respects or listens to them. They want an opportunity to learn and a mentor, not just a blunt, in-your-face boss who tells them what to do.