How Gen Y and Boomers Will Reshape Your Agenda

How Gen Y and Boomers Will Reshape Your Agenda

The article starts off with the general links connecting Gen Y and Boomers such as their appreciation for ‘remixed’ rewards and opportunities to give back and then dives into a framework that employers should use to attract and retain these two generations.

The reason that Gen Y and boomers can be grouped into one cohort is because they can have similar views and values, like they say, old age is second childhood. Boomers have a renewed vigour when it comes to finding innovative ideas or being environmentally conscious and this complements the ideals held by Gen Y. The case study we did in class is illustrative of this. The young enthusiastic worker was eager to put across his ideas but they were quickly shot down by his Gen X boss. The CEO however, who belonged to the Boomers, was intrigued by these ideas and wanted to hear more.

I feel another important reason for why Gen Y and Boomers have a better relationship then Gen Y and Gen X is because there is no competition between them. I recently read an article in the Huffington Post that talked about the age discrimination that many Gen X employees are subjected to. Gen Y works faster, for cheaper and do not have any familial obligations yet due to which many Gen X employees are replaced by Gen Y employees. This could cause some animosity between the two generations making it harder for them to learn from each other.

There are five principles that the author believes a company should build their employee policy framework around. Firstly, Modularity, this focuses mainly on creating some kind of program that assists Boomers in the second phase of their lives. The ability to retire in a stage by stage process or to head the non-profit programs of the company goes a long way in keeping these workers happy and loyal.

The next principle the author talks about is Flexibility in work timings. This is something I wished the previous company I worked for, Zomato Media, had considered. I lived about 13miles away from my workplace, that may not sound like much here but I lived in Bangalore which is a heavily populated city and a distance that long always had some new hell in store for me on the way to work. I was expected to be there by 9AM sharp and most I was. There were a couple of days a month that I was there a little later due to some moron trucker or bus who decided to block everybody’s way and drive as slow as possible. This did not sit well with my team leader. But what really got me in this situation was that I had no actual work until 11AM or 12PM. I worked with restaurant owners and managers and their work timings began at 11 or 12 so I could not meet or call them until then. The other daily tasks I did all depended on the performance data that we picked up the previous day and this data was not available to anyone in the Bangalore office until 12PM when it was posted up.