Challenges of Managing Generations in the Workplace

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Enterprise Leadership

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Introduction
According to Bolton et.al. (2013 pg. 1) people who have born between 1981- 1995
are known as Generation Y. They are also known as Digital natives. The group of
population who falls under Generation Y tends to interact with other people across
the world via various social media platforms and they do not follow the traditional
communication methods. The other name of Generation Y is millennials. According
to Agrawal (2017) each and every organisation with multigenerational workforce
consists of people with variety of traits of personality. The aim of this essay is to find
out the different challenges that are being faced by managers of the organisation in
order to manage differences in generations in the work place. The essay will also
discuss about how the Gen X and Gen Y are different from each other in terms of
personality as well as thinking.
Argument 1 – Styles of communication
Formal communication is one of the important aspect in an organization.
Unfortunately, it has been found out that when it comes to communicating there
exists a conflict between two generations and thus it is considered as one of the
major and crucial challenge which is faced by managers of any organization. The
form of communication of the Generation Y is more collaborative in nature. People
who belong from Gen X or the baby boomers tends to communicate formally using
the method of face to face communication and also in the traditional form using
phones and business emails. On the other hand, Generation Y tends to interact
more in informal language using abbreviations which sometimes become difficult for
the managers to interpret and thus it creates a communication gap. The
characteristics of communication which is being followed by the Gen Y is more

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instant, quick and playful unlike the people who belong from the Gen X. Most of the
people who belong to the Gen Y community spend their time in communicating with
others via different platforms of social media and thus they are often called Digital
natives. Workforce who belongs to the Generation Y also focusses on doing text
messages while communicating with their team leaders instead of emails. This
sometimes lead to misunderstanding while communication. Misunderstanding while
communication or lack of communication may lead to serious problem in the
workplace. To avoid such challenges organizations should implement the use of both
emails as well as direct messages in order to keep a pace with both the generations.
Argument 2 – Technical skills
According to Kilber, Barclay and Ohmer (2014 pg. 82) an important character of Gen
Y which has been recognized is that the whole generation is very tech savvy which
means they have a detailed knowledge of technology and the use of technology.
Gen Y is considered to be the first generation who has experience the globalized
world post the digital explosion. According to Venter (2017) this generation has
grown up by seeing various wireless devices like mobile phones, laptops etc. This is
the main reason that the workforce who belong from the Gen Y tends to learn new
things with the use of various forms of technology. On the other hand, the workforce
from Gen X used self-learning tools and other traditional method of learning in the
organization. Thus, this is one of the very important multi-generational challenge
which is being faced by the managers in an organization. Gen Y is more interested in
working with the use of visual media instead of reading texts from hard copies. On
the other hand, the workforce who does not belong from this generation tends to rely
on hard copies of documents while executing any work. When in a team both the