Gender Role In Generations

In today’s multigeneration work environment, knowing the difference between generational styles and gender challenges can provide you the advantage you need in order to effectively influence all your followers. In our country where the mainstream is changing us rapidly, knowing and developing generations awareness is paramount to be successful in a workplace.

 Today’s work environment consisting of at least four generations such us; Traditionals, a few still at work, Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Generation Y which is most commonly referred to as the Millennials. Our class literature, Generations, Inc. describes, as “each of those generations has immensely totally different expectations concerning what the workplace ought to supply, how they should behave as employees, how they should be managed, and how they should manage others.” (Johnson & Johnson, 2010) Apart from the age characterization of each generation, the differences that set them apart, and resist the temptation to pass judgment on each generation characteristic. It is important to understand that Generation Y, Millennials, is the last wave to join the workforce, a digital generation born into the world of technology and they are highly qualified in digital knowledge; therefore it is easy for them to quickly acquire the knowledge and how of the current workplace tech systems and to quickly master the new technology tools and highly sophisticated IT devices and a generation that ”easily accept changes in a work environment, they live for today, they do not like to plan for long periods; they rather want to enjoy themselves in their own world.” (Bencsik, Juhasz, & Horvath-Csikos, 2016) Not to forget that a big portion of their social environment is in a virtual environment mainly on the world wide web and social media sites. In the workplace, “many of the senior workers from older generations who shaped the modern workplace have reservations about sharing the same physical space with members of Generation Y.” (Mahoney, 2015) In fact, “an estimated 60% of the HR professionals in large companies report inter-generational conflicts between younger and older employees.” (Mahoney, 2015).” 

For example, it has been suggested that Millennials do not value traditional wage employment and the “work environment may encounter productivity challenges if changes are not made to accommodate employees with different attitudes and expectations.” (Pyoria, Ojala, Saari, & Jarvinen, 2017) I read during my literature research that Millennials are determined as opposed to the generation X. However, other researchers strongly believe, “that the members of generation X were also full of determination at the same age of Millennials when they started to explore the job market in the same age.” (Johnson and Johnson, 2010) Some of the research that I found suggested that Millennials are a “want it” and “want it now” generation, but when Generation Xs and Baby Boomers were newly fresh college graduates and at a young age, the historical research suggested the same type of behavior by them wanting rapid successes, a good pay and benefits job, work, life and balance, and of course challenging work. However, a difference between the Generations is that “Millennials has been suggested that many of their career goals and expectations among them are supersized, unrealistic, and disconnected between reward and performance.” (Kolnhofer-Derecskei, 2017) During my literature research, many types of researchers agree on the difficulty that has been for work organizations to “retain Millennials workers because they have a tendency to change jobs more oft than their person or generation counterparts.” (Mahoney, 2015) This is a bigger issue with the Millennials and has brought up many questions about their commitment to their workplace. Lipkin and Perrymore “emphasize that this alteration in attitudes towards commitment has caused major retention and engagement problems which Millennials employees are “costing firms excessive bucks a year because loyalty is dead.” (Mahoney, 2015) My literature research concerning gender in a workplace found out that men value work more than women do with an interesting interaction effect concerning age. “Whereas younger men worth employment but older male workers, the quite opposite holds for younger women: Older female employees respect work less than their younger colleagues. 

At a similar time, between young men and women, the gender difference does not exist.” (Pyoria, Ojala, Saari, & Jarvinen, 2017) A study conducted by the Colorado State University on Age and Gender Stereotypes; New Challenges in a Changing Workplace and Workforce suggested that “men were perceived as being better equipped to handle stressful situations in a workplace and to adapt physically than were females. Conversely, females were perceived as being better at learning and at adapting interpersonally and culturally. In addition, the study found that the “55‐year‐old female target was seen as the least adaptive with respect to creative problem-solving and in contrasting the different targets with the reference group, the older male target was viewed consistently as being less adaptive than workers in general.” (Kolnhofer-Derecskei, 2017) Some researchers suggested that companies are trying to suit their organizations, adjust gender quotas, modify their structure, and styles to suit all their employees as a strategy for addressing gender and generational issues. However, a simpler solution from researchers is better communication between generations due to the fact that “the discrepancies between generations are often due and strengthened by the different communication of the generations. As long as a generation is being educated and served by the previous generation, this education is chargeable for any problems with the new generation.” (Bencsik, Juhasz, & Horvath-Csikos, 2016) 

However, additional research is required to address the newest generation challenge because “they will not respect authority; respect is not based on title or position; all their colleagues must earn their respect.” (Mahoney, 2015) Different researchers believe that the relationship of various generational age groups may give not solely conflicts but positive results for the workplace.