There’s rarely a day goes by without a new headline sharing the latest research on the needs of wants at work of various generational groups….
Gen X are rapidly taking over the CEO helm from the boomers and they are said to be supporting more informal, flexible working habits. Research from Stanford found that given the choice boomers would happily spend 35% of their working week working from home. For Gen X and millennials this rises to 50% and the drops slightly for Gen Z to 45%
A survey by LinkedIn and Duolingo, of 8000 workers in 8 different companies, found that Gen Z and millennials are fed up with business jargon. Time to say goodbye to ‘circling back’, ‘boiling the ocean’ and ‘reaching out’ then…
There seems to be a borderline obsession with understanding these different generational groups, and savvy consultants are making a quick buck helping Gen X (like me) understand how to engage Gen Z (like my kids). I get it. Anything that can help me connect more easily with the younger generation sounds good. I really have no idea why they find those memes so funny. I’ve googled it and it seems it is post-ironic humour… I’m still lost!
But delve a bit deeper into the research and you’ll find that actually the differences aren’t really that significant at all. Recent research from McKinsey on generational preferences at work has found that although there are some interesting nuances between generational groups (see above), in actual fact there are way more similarities than there are differences. In their research they found all ages want meaningful work, real connections, broader purpose and fair compensation.
This comes as no surprise to use at People Lab. We uncovered very similar findings from our ‘best experience’ research which we based our EX Lens model on. And over the years having developed hundreds of behavioural based employee personas for clients, we mostly find that age is irrelevant. This is why we love using Design Thinking in our employee experience and engagement work – it helps us to avoid making assumptions about what people want from their work.
If you would like to find out more about developing employee personas, or using Design Thinking for EX and engagement, then we’d love to hear from you.
You can also check out The EX Space where we are about to launch a brand new bitesize course on developing and using employee personas. To find out more or take a look around, you can book a demo here.
