Is Generational Prejudice Seeping into Your Workplace?

The year is 2005. YouTube has just launched, and social media usage is on the rise. Mariah Carey and Gwen Stefani are vying for the top song of the year. The first cohort of Millennials is stepping into the workforce. And the business world has plenty to celebrate: The economy is booming, job offers are plentiful and competitive, and technology is advancing faster than ever.

It sounds like a youthful happily ever after. But there was a plot twist: Millennials were eyed warily by their employers and colleagues.

Report after report emphasized how much Baby Boomers and Gen Xers needed to change to accommodate this new generation of lazy, entitled, and disloyal workers and how these young folks would disrupt the workplace as we knew it. The media latched on to these generalizations, reporting that Millennials wanted more “me” time on the job, only took “yes” for an answer, and let their parents assume a peculiarly active role in their professional lives.

As a result, company leaders and senior employees did change, creating processes and policies based on these beliefs. Ping-Pong tables and beer on tap became priorities, constant feedback the gold standard, work-life balance more important than meaningful career progression.

Staff relax with a game of table tennis at the Quatrro call center on the outskirts of New Delhi in 2008. (Photo: Findlay Kember/AFP via Getty Images)

Did these changes actually help Millennials succeed at work? Hardly. While some companies reported lower turnover rates after introducing flexible work schedules, aggressive engagement policies, and wellness programs, the “me me me” generation was actually burning out. Turns out it was filled with workaholics; many discontented Millennials embraced side hustles amid the burgeoning gig economy and the uncertainty of the Covid-19 pandemic. (And no, those Ping-Pong tables weren’t necessary.)

As Millennials ourselves, we have been subjected to pervasive stereotyping (“I’m sure you prefer Slack over email”) and condescending assumptions (“You’ve been here for two years. Time to move on?”). If you’re part of this generation, you’ve probably experienced bias like this too. Workers of all generations have — when it comes to our supposed differences from each other, there are plenty of stereotypes to go around.

This made us wonder: Does intergenerational anxiety stem from actual differences? Or is it created by the mere belief that certain disparities exist? And if it’s the latter, what can we do to thwart those stereotypes before we create mismatched workplaces for generations to come?

Why Generational Biases Exist at Work

Beliefs about generations have long provided a flawed but convenient framework for managerial thinking and decision-making. Our research for this article uncovered a few reasons they persist.

We put things in buckets to make sense of them.

According to Michael Kramer, former chair of the department of communication at the University of Oklahoma, “Humans naturally seek simplified explanations for their own and others’ behavior through a process of sensemaking, especially during uncertain times. Constructing and adopting stereotypes is one way of doing that.”

Bobby Duffy, a professor and the author of The Generation Myth: Why When You’re Born Matters Less Than You Think, agrees. “We like stories about who we are and who we’re not, and we like to categorize everything into what it is and what it’s not,” he told us. These stories are appealing, especially when they’re vivid and memorable, with labels and anecdotes behind them. “And that’s certainly what’s happened with generational labels,” he added.

All of this can make us feel closer to colleagues of our generation. “We feel that when we are born matters because there is a sense of connection to our peers…They have gone through what we have gone through. It feels intuitive. And it works really well as shorthand communication in headlines or when we want to sum up complex things in simple labels,” Duffy said.

Managers who are nervous or unsure about leading a new age cohort — particularly when the media is putting them on high alert — may rely on generational labels as shortcuts for engaging and attracting those workers. Duffy noted that leaders sometimes use stereotypes as scapegoats when something isn’t working. “When you believe that it’s not your fault as an employer — that it’s just this weird generation coming into the workforce and placing unreasonable demands on you — you shift the blame onto them” instead of understanding and addressing the root issue.

Rosy retrospection plagues us.

Cognitive psychologist Gordon Bower found that our memories are reconstructed when we recall them — a process prone to manipulation and errors. Various types of memory bias can affect our decision-making in both positive and negative ways. Rosy retrospection, or declinism, is one such bias: It refers to our tendency to minimize the negatives of the past, leading us to view it more positively than the present.

Duffy says that, as a result, we think things used to be better than they are now and believe everything is going downhill. “Coupled with generational thinking, we feel the current situation is dreadful; clearly, the new generation is at fault and will change everything,” he explains wryly. When we look for someone to blame, a new cohort could, conveniently, fit the bill.

But if you feel that young workers today are being too demanding (whether about wanting better tech infrastructure or sporting tattoos and beards at work), you’re probably forgetting that you, too, were insistent and intent on forging your identity at that age. Or as one illustrative example proffered: “The hippies of the late 1960s became the dress-for-success yuppies of the 1980s.”

A stockbroker for L.F. Rothschild in New York City, 1984. (Photo: Barbara Alper/Getty Images)

Employers are vying for talent in any way they can.

Consider Google, with its nap pods, on-site laundry service, free snacks, and colorful beanbag chairs. What began as a data-driven recruitment and retention strategy — projecting the company’s “cool quotient” to encourage a robust applicant pool and lengthier employee tenures — soon became an industry benchmark that others measured branding efforts against.

More recently, companies have used popular insights to “seem less square.” They’re marketing themselves as culturally diverse (Millennials expect a diverse workplace), providing collaborative environments (Millennials work better in groups than alone) and flexible work schedules (Gen Zers love work-life balance), and keeping their Instagram profiles up-to-date (both generations like that one) to attract younger people. Firms are also conducting extensive employer brand surveys to reveal the priorities of specific generations — yet many may not be unique to any age group, like better compensation packages and meaningful work.

Generational stereotypes have created a cottage industry.

From books to podcasts to consultancies, there are any number of lucrative reasons to assert that generational differences do, indeed, exist and are central to the workplace. “There’s a whole industry around generations,” Cort Rudolph, an industrial and organizational psychologist and faculty member at Saint Louis University whose research focuses on work and aging, told us.

Because managers are led to believe they must adapt their approaches for different generations — and are unsure about how to do that — they often seek help that can provide insights and guidance. As a result, “companies go out and hire generational experts to come in and clean up intergenerational conflicts,” says Rudolph.

And it’s not cheap. As of a few years ago, some consultants were charging $20,000 to $30,000 per hour, and Source Global Research estimated that U.S. organizations spent $60 million to $70 million on generational consulting in 2015 alone. The long-term success of such efforts remains to be seen (we’re still debating if Millennials will ever get the workplace they want), but meanwhile generational consulting related to Gen Z has become popular.

Moving Beyond Generational Thinking

But is it really so bad if companies try to leverage popular insights to win over every generation at work? Well, possibly yes. “We’re basing a lot of practice decisions, a lot of policies, a lot of approaches in the workplace on pretty shaky science,” Rudolph explained. And it can negatively affect employees. In fact, for this article we posted a LinkedIn poll to ask people if being part of a generation negatively influences how they’re treated at work. Sixty percent of respondents said it did.

Often what’s happening — which is less intentional than overt ageism — is reflected in organizational practices that, while appearing benign, aren’t applied to everyone equally. Rudolph offered an example: the popular narrative that people from younger generations want more flexibility. “As a manager, I’m going to read that and then afford different levels of flexibility to people based on their age. What results is a policy that seems to be grounded in what a certain subset of the population wants — when in reality, everybody values flexibility.”

Such beliefs can influence everything from how new teammates are onboarded, to how they are trained or mentored, to even how teams collaborate and communicate — and that breadth can pose great risk to organizations’ age inclusivity and employee performance. One experiment found that trainers assigned to teach someone a computer-related task had lower expectations and provided worse training when they believed the person was older.

So, how do we design policies and processes that protect us from ageist behaviors, rather than relying on assumptions or stereotypes?

Consider other explanations for employee similarities and differences.

“It’s really difficult to separate out what is actually a generation from other types of influences that co-occur with time,” noted Rudolph. Each of us has more in common with our older and younger counterparts than we might realize, which can be attributed to life cycle effects, or how we grow and change as we age. For example, younger professionals — who are typically less tied down by family obligations — are more likely to experiment with their careers and take risks to find the right fit, as compared with older workers, who are more established in their careers. Ironically, a report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that Boomers did as much job hopping in their twenties as Millennials at that age.

There are other kinds of effects that influence us too. A 2020 report found that people born in the same year or span of years may share some similarities (cohort effects), though they may have very different experiences and outlooks depending on social and economic factors or geographic location. People are also influenced by period effects, or events and changes (a pandemic, a war, a recession) that impact everyone at a given point in time. Attributing someone’s behavior to one effect when it’s due more to another effect can lead to misunderstandings.

For example, Millennials and Gen Zers are known for the stereotype that they switch jobs quickly. That might seem to be a cohort effect — young people today like to job hop, perhaps because they’re disloyal to employers. But consider that both generations spent their formative years in a recession — a period effect. Members with access to higher-paying roles and industry connections or with the ability to live in a region with ample job opportunities may be doing fine. But many others haven’t accumulated wealth the way their predecessors did and have comparatively sluggish earning trajectories. They’ve also started fewer businesses due to unfavorable economic conditions. These factors, combined with pension plans becoming outmoded and the fact that significant raises usually don’t come from advancing in one’s current company, have led many younger workers to job hop to seek higher wages — so they can devote more to retirement savings.

Recognize that employees’ needs are often universal.

Jessica Kriegel, a workplace culture expert and the author of Unfairly Labeled: How Your Workplace Can Benefit from Ditching Generational Stereotypes, described to us a town hall meeting gone awry when a CEO stated that Millennials value work-life balance more than compensation. What he believed to be an innocuous comment — a compliment, even — caused an uproar. Employees of all ages complained to HR.

“Millennials were adamant that salary mattered to them and were concerned the organization had offered them less as a result of this work-life belief,” Kriegel explained. “And older employees insisted that work-life balance was important to them as well. People generally have a negative reaction to being told who they are and what they value.”

So, if managers and leaders should stop using generations as a framework for customizing policies, what should they use instead? Rudolph suggests focusing on actual, identifiable, and relevant differences by adopting a life-span perspective on aging at work — that is, focusing on the differences between and changes within employees as they age.

For example, you might base your policies on the assumption that only Millennials care about work-life balance, autonomy, or flexible working hours. But when you consider a life-span perspective, you realize that any caregiver would find those policies attractive, irrespective of generation. Offering tailor-made policies isn’t just an inefficient use of resources, as some employees may not want them; it also ties up resources that would be highly valued by those who actually need them.

Staff work at Janeiro Digital in Boston in 2018. Play spaces that were designed to recruit workers in their twenties are out; low-key but tasteful furniture is in, as are areas set aside for quiet work and group collaboration. (Photo: Craig F. Walker/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

Consider societal changes when crafting policies.

Task- or work-environment-related changes must address larger societal trends and universal factors, such as pay transparency (employees want to lessen the gender pay gap) or better work-life integration (work isn’t the only thing employees want to do with their time).

For example, many couples are choosing to delay having children or not carry children themselves. In response, Zomato — India’s biggest food-delivery app — introduced a 26-week parental leave that applies to all employees, including surrogate or adoptive parents as well as same-sex parents. “The needs of our people are more specific to their life stages and the roles they play at work and at home, as compared to the generation they belong to,” Daminee Sawhney, the company’s vice president, human resources and operations, explained.

Naturally, such policies shouldn’t be created in a vacuum. Zomato considers a combination of its culture and the feedback it receives from employees about what they expect from the organization in the long term. “We don’t rely on generational studies or consultants to guide us. Instead, we enable our people to operate from a space of accountability and trust and believe in continually assessing and abandoning practices that no longer serve us as a collective,” Sawhney added.

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The rise in remote work is another example of a societal change that is valuable irrespective of someone’s generation. SAP in India designed its WFH policy in 2013 in response to employee proposals. The policy has evolved through the pandemic and has been honed to address the future of work.

“Pledge to Flex is an excellent example of how we have taken perspectives of employees representing various personas on what flexibility and hybrid work meant to them and has stood the test of time,” Shraddhanjali Rao, the company’s head of HR, told us. “Today, we have a playbook that respects individuality and empowers our employees to choose their way of hybrid working, keeping their teams and business context in mind.”

Like the shift to working from home, some societal changes will be easy to identify and difficult to ignore. Others will require paying more attention to how new governmental policies might impact workers in your industry or to what other organizations offer employees, such as fertility benefits or tuition reimbursement. Maintaining an open internal dialogue within company forums can help leaders to further identify the supports that are most valued by their workforce.

The above recommendations may not entirely rid your organization of generational biases. But they can help you understand when focusing on generational differences might not be helpful. Only then can you begin building programs and processes that meaningfully support an age-diverse workforce.