Let Me Out of the Box (part 2 of 3)

Generational experts say that people in a given generation have the same traits and tendencies. However, when looked at closely we begin to see things being much different than what experts
have classified as “Your Generation”. Generations typically are described as a 20 year block of time, for example Generation X (or Gen X) was born in 1964 to about 1983. In history the shortest generation was 17 years and the longest was 24, so the actual dates become fuzzy depending on which expert you ask.

My colleagues and I had a thought. What if a person did not display the general traits and tendencies of their generation? We began attempting to understand how and where the lines were being drawn between generations and gathering the specifics of each generation to study the current generational mix in the workforce. We found that there are currently at least four generations in the US workforce.

Being web application and training developers, we built a database with a web interface to ask a few questions, collect the data, and emailed the URL to some of our friends. The result of our first generational audit was quite interesting and not what we had expected. We expected that everyone would generally follow their own generation. That is to say, a Gen X'er profile would reflect strong Gen X traits, Baby Boomers would score high on the Boomer scale, and so on.

What we actually saw was that people scored across generations. GI Gens scoring high Boomer or Boomers scoring as a high Gen Y. We concluded that many people actually associate themselves surprisingly well to other generations regardless of the generation in which they are born.

For more information on generational differences in the workplace go to GenerationalProfiles.com