Generation Differences Essay

Employee motivation is, or at least must be, one of the key issues for directors, managers and personnel managers. The leader must be able to find the sensitive strings of his subordinates, which can be motivated by influencing them to achieve high performance. The correct use of motivation encourages staff to make more efficient use of their knowledge, skills, and talents. In today's turbulent, often chaotic environment, commercial success depends on the employee's talent and effort. Despite the many existing theories and practices, some of the motivation of leaders today remains a mystical term. This is partly due to the fact that people are motivated by different things and techniques.

In any workplace, workers are no doubt the essential mainstay that holds any business or corporation together. Employees achieve important tasks to help the company’s long term vision and goals to be successful and efficient. A business can’t be successful without a proper management that is why it is important for employees to enjoy going to work and they also have maintain a positive attitude while being productive and completing tasks. Motivation is what gives a person the purpose to perform or behave in a certain way with the desire or willingness to gain something. There are two types of motivations, motivation that comes from a person and motivation that comes from materially goals. It is very necessary that employers keep their employees motivated and encourage them to perform above expectations.

There are as many different methods of motivating employees today as there are companies operating in the global business environment. Still, some strategies are prevalent across all organizations striving to improve employee motivation. The best employee motivation efforts will focus on what the employees deem to be important. It may be that employees within the same department of the same organization will have different motivators. Many organizations today find that flexibility in job design and reward systems has resulted in employees ' increased longevity with the company, improved productivity, and better morale.

America has about five generations that function in our society today, and they are Traditionalists, Baby Boomers, Generation X, Generation Y, and the Millennial. It is interesting the way that an age gap influences the thinking of millions of people in different generations. Different times and situations require that different strategies be put in place for the following generation. Solutions that worked for one generation may be less useful for the next, so sometimes, because of the age gap, these solutions cause disagreements. These various ideologies all have one goal, and that is to be successful. We will discuss the path of the Baby Boomers and Generation X in the workplace environment.

In her article “The Tethered Generation,” in Society of Human Resources Magazine, writer Kathryn Tyler asserts that people born between 1978 and 1999, also known as the Millennial Generation, would bring challenges to the workplace, attributing early access to technology and a “perpetual connection to parents” as causes. The article’s central tenet is that through technology, this generation’s “tethered” relationship with peers and parents has shaped communication, decision making, and need for connectivity. Tyler identifies the following Millennial traits as challenges to organizations: “unrealistic expectations with respect to goal-setting and planning;” “only adequate professionalism and work ethic, creativity and innovation, and critical thinking and problem solving;” and lack of autonomy and “sense of self-reliance.” The article ends by recommending that human resource management prepare for the Millennial’s “high maintenance” and their parent’s “helicoptering” with policies and training programs (Tyler, 2007).

As successive generations enter the workforce business leaders and managers continually face one challenge, “how do we motivate the next generation of employees?” The transition from Baby Boomer to Generation X, was considered a minor shift for businesses since they’re classified as the “me” and “individualist” generations. The Boomers and Generation X respected both authority and the traditional hierarchal structure, compared to the Generation Y more commonly known as Millennials are considered individuals who respect yet challenge authority and the traditional hierarchal structures. Within this article we’ll review “Gen X Is From Mars, Gen Y Is From Venus: A Primer On How To Motivates A Millennial” by Rob Asghar and “7 Surprising Ways To Motivate Millennial Workers” by Jenna Goudreau, two articles published by Forbes Magazine. After reviewing what Forbes’ Professional writers have to say about Millennials, we’ll hear what Millennial’s have to say about Forbes. While Generation X Lives to work, Generation Y works to live is the driving theme behind Rob Asghar’s article, he uses four mains point to explain what this means. He covers how Millennial’s concept of authority vastly differs from previous generations since Millennials were raised in an environment where their opinions mattered. Asghar discusses how the shift away from Generation X’s individualistic characteristic to Millennials global sense of community affects their motivation. In the second half of his article

More than ten thousand Baby Boomers retire every single day (Gurwitt, 2013). Combine that with the fact that there are currently four generations are in the workforce and managers of today have their work cut out for them. These leaders must ensure the knowledge from the retiring baby boomers is transferred to the remaining workforce, while simultaneously managing the retention of the disloyal, self-centered Millennials. Many leaders in this situation are finding it difficult to create and develop an organizational culture that supports this and conflict is manifesting in many organizations (Carpenter & DeCharon, 2014).

Generational differences and characteristics are multifaceted, and increasingly diverse leadership groups exist within today’s organizations. Tailoring the leadership approach and messaging to various generations improves effectiveness. Terry Wiedmer (2015) explores the strengths, differences and values of generations X, Y, Z and today's Traditionalists and Boomers. Comprehension of how the existing culture at UPS connects to the new breed of Millennial’s becomes an undemanding realization to new frontrunners. Using a narrowed focus by synthesizing generational complexions, leadership facilitators will experience superior success. UPS Leadership University is imperative to recognize the audience and convey a targeted generational specific

Each and every generation from the 1500s, to the 1900s has its greatness and downfalls. But the unfortunate part about generations is that they downfalls outweigh the positive accomplishments and greatness about the generations, like mine for example. The two biggest problems that my generation has to face is one, child and adult obesity, and secondly over use of cellular devices. Obesity is the state of being heavily over-weight also known as being fat. In the past 30 years the childhood obesity rate has doubled. The percentage of children aged 6–11 years in the United States who were obese increased from 7% in 1980 to nearly 18% in 2012. Similarly, the percentage of adolescents aged 12–19 years who were obese increased from 5% to nearly 21% over the same period. These statstics disgust me everytime i talk about these

In general, research suggests that there are intergenerational differences in values and expectations of employees in the workplace. In this argument, four main parts contribute to the topic: firstly, the different generations in the workforce will be defined and explained; secondly, the differences between Generation Y and previous generations will be discussed; thirdly, the reason why managers should treat Generation Y differently will be explained; finally, key points addressing the topic will be summarised in the conclusion.

Not only am I a member of generation "Y" but I am also a part of the working class so I tend to work with all three generations daily. Though we all work harmoniously together now, that was not the case in the very beginning when my bosses decided to make some pretty monumental changes. When I began working there, I was only fifteen years old. I was working for a manager who was a part of generation "X" and we very often did not see eye to eye because of the way we were both raised to work. When the owners (who are baby boomers), asked me what I thought could be changed or heightened, my manager. at the time was not quick to jump on board. Being a part of generation "Y", I am a worker who always wants to succeed and climb higher in ranks, which was something that my manager was not used to.

Over the last several years, the issue of employee motivation inside the workplace has been increasingly brought to the forefront. The reason why is because, globalization has been having an effect on the ability of firms to compete (which is placing more pressure on them). To deal with these challenges, most organizations are relying on their employees. The results are that those employers who are able to use this resource will be able to make adjustments quickly. This is when the firm will be able to maintain their dominance in the marketplace.

As the economy continues to struggle, it becomes more and more difficult to find ways to continue to motivate employees. To motivate your staff, you must be a role model to the staff and pave the way for motivation. The result of productivity within the business is measured by the effort that a manager puts into the employees to improve their occupational performances. It it thought that motivation comes from within ourselves, although, motivation from an outside source can boost the work rate as well. In today’s workforce, a manager endures various challenges with motivating their employees that did not exist in the workforce fifty years ago. Each challenge that a manager experiences ties hand in hand with one another and are all equally important. The three challenges that I will be discussing in this paper include: lack of communication, diversity and personal issues.

The desire by some to stay and work longer has led to the current workforce capturing many generations. With countries such as the US capturing as many as 5 distinct generations, others have been able to capture 4 and 3. The various generations segment the different age ranges into generations generally governed by different attitudes to work, preferences and value systems. The attitude, preference, and values held by any generation affect the way they approach their works. 21st-century organizations tend to prefer managers who can deal with the different generations as they have different characteristics and present diverse challenges. The attitude of the various generations greatly differs in the workplace. The generations in the workforce have been segmented into the following demographics: the Traditionalists (also known as the silent generation or the greatest generation); the baby boomers; generation X; generation Y (also known as Millennial), and finally generation Z. An understanding of these

In today ‘s working stressful environment, motivation is necessary for more productivity. Motivation is considered as force to achieve specific goals. In an organization a manager or leader should always motivate his/her subordinates to perform work. There are number of motivational theories given by social scientist. But we will focus on the five main theories which are given below: