According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that’s the number of Americans who quit their jobs every day.  That gets me thinking about what is important to us at work.  Because if we’re not getting what’s important, we may be among the 83,000 who quit each day.

It won’t surprise you to know that what’s important is different among the generations.  I stress different.  Not bad, just different!

• If you’re over 63 and part of the WWII generation, you work hard, respect authority, follow the rules and you feel that you’ve paid your dues.  You are loyal to your employer and in your eyes, the customer is always right.
• If you’re a baby boomer, you’ve (we’ve) worked hard and long — some may accuse you of being a workaholic.  You’re competitive and you want to be respected and rewarded.
• Gen Xers, age 30 to 45, work smart, not hard — but that’s not a criticism because you get the job done.  You work to live, you don’t want to be micro-managed, you want to be thanked (often) and you want all the boomers and WWIIers to lighten up.
• Finally, if you’re a GenYer, born after 1978, you want important and interesting work.  You want goals and direction — and a mentor rather than a manager.  Finally, and this is a lesson we should all learn, you want to have fun.

Message to employers:  Understand what the different generations want and work hard to give it to them.  Be creative!

Another message to employers:  Since we’re all working together, help your employees understand and embrace the different generations.

Message to the members of the different generations:  Don’t judge your co-workers just because they want different things.  Respect the differences and learn from each other. 

What generational diversity issues do you face at work?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008 at 5:00 am and is filed under Generational Diversity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.