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dad I want you to retire I want you to
live a long life I want you to meet your
grandson your job is killing you it’s
stressing you out they’re not treating
you all that well at the end of your
career this is a conversation I had with
my dad in our annual fishing trip and is
the reason why I’m passionate about
studying age in the workplace because we
can do better we can do better for
people throughout their lifespans and so
today I’m here in alignment with my
passion to talk to you about
generational labels and why we shouldn’t
use them to describe people of different
ages so what am I talking about here so
generations are a group of people that
were born within a certain birth range
and because of being born during that
certain birth range they experienced
similar things that influenced them
during key developmental points in their
lives and it stems from sociological
research to explain changes attitudinal
changes over time things like political
movements and so the assumption here is
that these shared experiences that
people have make them more like than
different so if you share these this
birth range then you’re gonna have more
similarities than those that don’t share
this birth range
I like into a backpack because through
our lives we have these formative
experiences they could be economic
experiences or historical experiences
that are significant to us and we put
them in our backpack and we carry them
with us and they color the way we
interact with the world and so the
people who are born during the similar
time as us carry similar things so
people who were born around the same
time as me probably carry things around
9/11 or maybe the end of the Cold War or
the crumbling of the Berlin Wall
people who aren’t born in a similar
range of years probably carry you
something different and so that’s really
what we’re talking about here and so it
seems intuitive right it seems intuitive
that these would be a simple relatively
harmless way to describe people and a
complex interaction between societal
changes and lifespan development seems
pretty simple seems like a nice rule of
thumb or a heuristic we can use to
provide a better understanding about how
we could interact with work with manage
maybe even market to different people of
different ages in fact we’re inundated
by things in the popular press about
generations and how we should work with
them or the generational divide and we
probably are sitting here going yeah
there must be some sort of data to
support this in fact there isn’t at
least in the workplace literature it is
extremely inconsistent and so I point
our attention to Costanza and colleagues
who conducted a meta-analysis which is a
summary of scientific articles that look
at a particular relationship in this
case the articles are looking at
generational differences and workplace
outcomes so they looked at 20 studies
and what they found was there’s no
systematic difference across these
studies that would say that a
generational difference caused these
different workplace outcomes and so the
outcomes they looked at were things like
job satisfaction commitment intentions
to leave and they’re not the only ones
there are several other researchers have
come to the same result that there’s
inconsistent and lack of support for
these generational differences others
have argued that we haven’t actually
fully tested generational differences
and so let me explain what I’m talking
about here so there’s three factors you
have to take into account when you’re
studying generations you have to take in
chronological age the birth cohort or
the generation and then the period in
which you actually collect the data
and so the primary way that research
designs have been conducted are
cross-sectional and cross temporal
designs so let me explain what a
cross-sectional would be so cross
section would be me asking all of you a
question in the audience tonight it’s
one period in time so it holds the
period constant but any differences I
find could be due to chronological age
or birth cohort or generation you cannot
differentiate those at this point to
make that explanation across temporal
design holds age constant so let’s say I
want to study 25 year olds in subsequent
10-year periods so 25 year olds now 25
year olds in 10 years 20 years 30 years
what that does it holds chronological
age constant but yet any difference I
find could be due to generational cohort
or the beriin period in which you
actually collected the data so we
actually haven’t fully tested this in
fact what adds more complexity here is
that recent researchers by Costanza and
colleagues did an additional research
looking at the different methods of
statistical analysis employed to study
generational differences and what they
found is depending on which method you
use you actually had a little bit
different results in fact they concluded
that really we haven’t fully tested by
the methods that we view it utilized or
employed we haven’t fully encompassed
and tested generational differences so
even if we’ve solved all these different
design issues what we’re left with are
these fuzzy definitions of generations
so which cutoff should we go with let me
give you an example millenials
Generation Y have been studied as being
be born between 1982 and 2000 1980 and
2000 some people have the cut offs
ending at 1992 and ranging to 1997 in
fact some people have called for two g2
waves of generations Generation Y and
Generation Z another thing we need to
consider here is that cut-offs are a
socially constructed
but from whose perspective is it u.s.
perspective which is most of this
research is it regional is that the
researcher doing the study whose
perspective so you should be sitting
here being a little bit skeptical since
we don’t have consensus on a systematic
way to actually define these generations
so now I’ve talked about the empirical
side let me talk a little bit about my
concerns with regard to stereotypes
prejudice and discrimination
so generational labels essentially are
stereotypes stereotypes are a
generalization made about a group of
people based off of a characteristic so
in this case birth cohort and they’re
really a oversimplification of a complex
differences that are internalized and
then ultimately our accepted form of
ageism so I kind of liken this to a
horoscope you find a few
characterizations that ring true oh that
sounds like me but a generational label
then becomes this behavior that you look
for to reinforce your beliefs about a
particular group and so in other words
there’s kernels of truth right you may
see it here and there but it’s an over
let me talk a little bit about this what
I’m talking about ageism and this
acceptance of it in this internalization
so if I was to read this women are lazy
unfocused demanding and overly dependent
we’d be shocked we wouldn’t accept this
this is unacceptable or Caucasians are
lazy unfocused demanding and overly
dependent once again not acceptable yet
the minute I put in Millennials all the
sudden it becomes acceptable and this is
what I’m talking about that it’s an
accepted form of ageism and this
accepted fordham of ageism leads us to
have implicit biases or unconscious
biases it’s become so embedded in us we
don’t challenge it anymore and we react
to it
and because these are negative
stereotypes we have a negative
connotation with it
which then leads to discrimination and
so let me provide a little bit example
when I’m talking about maybe that’s
happening in terms of discrimination
would you hire someone who is labeled as
afraid of Technology anti-technology
stubborn and set in their ways that
doesn’t sound all that appealing that’s
a typical description of a baby boomer
in fact we have a federal law called the
Age Discrimination Employment Act of
1967 which outlaws us making
discriminatory actions against people
who are over the age of 40 and in terms
of employment actions so hiring firing
promotion and so what we found in this
last recession is that baby boomers had
a significantly longer reemployment time
than any of their counterparts maybe
it’s because of these generational
stereotypes another thing I want to
point out if you were to do a Google
search on managing generations in the
workplace you it would yield thousands
and thousands of articles giving you
thousands and thousands of prescriptions
of how to treat this group or that group
a typical one would be give Millennials
frequent feedback and provide
Millennials with flexible work schedules
and arrangements well doesn’t that sound
like differential treatment to you by an
age group it seems like maybe we’re
skirt and workplace law here and in fact
I give these examples because these are
beneficial to all employees we know this
through evidence and support that if you
get free feedback to any employee across
their lifespan they’re going to improve
their performance the same thing with
flexible work schedules it helps people
throughout their lifespan so they
benefit from it so why don’t we give
everybody the same treatment so I point
your attention to this quote this
generation has been disparaged for years
now there’s been widespread
misconception among the public that this
generation
mostly slackers dropping out of the rat
race to sponge off their parents or
barely surviving in low pay low status
low term or short term jobs sound
familiar
what generation is being referred to
here maybe you’re thinking millenials
that’d be a good answer
right in fact it’s Generation X and it
was written in 1995 I could have found
an article or a quote about baby boomers
when they were entering the workforce
also the reason why I bring this up is
that this is embedded in our society
these pernicious stereotypes are
embedded and they could be very hard to
overcome however we can do it and we can
do better for those across the lifespan
and the ways we can do it is three three
things stop using generational labels
ourselves bring this up to consciousness
don’t let these implicit biases color us
bring it up to consciousness and
challenge your biases challenge others
like I’m challenging you to stop using
these generational labels have them
challenge their implicit biases have
them raise it up to consciousness and my
third point here is to get to know
people at a deeper level by getting to
know people at a deeper level we don’t
focus at those surface level traits that
we label we actually get to know them
and can overcome those stereotypes that
we have in fact there’s research to
support intergenerational contact
actually leads to lower ageist attitudes
so let’s prevent conversations like I
had with my dad on that annual fishing
trip we can do better
generations no thank you
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