Five Generations at Work

3Intergenerational Working

As we were undertaking our research and looking to further explore and understand the challenges of intergenerational working, we took a diversity of approaches. In practice, this meant:

Conducting a global body of research with a wide range of organisations facing different challenges and exploring their approaches to managing multigenerational workplaces.

Taking pulses into the generational discourse through non-generative AI-based research and super-analytics.

Paralleling these two paths with a series of conversations around the world, and deep reflection upon our own experiences and work across a diverse range of international organisations and roles.

As we travelled, we built a live database of evidence of our ongoing research and reflections across global markets looking for patterns and, most importantly, at how people were pioneering new ways of working together across generations. One of those new ways of working relates to the use of AI and our own use of it in the research for this book. With our partners Quilt.AI and Anurag Banerjee’s talented team, we took a multigenerational and multicultural approach to the design and implementation of the study, working with a diverse team of Gen Zs, Millennials, Gen Xers and Boomers from five countries.

Our approach was to deploy deep anthropological AI expertise combined with significant experience of leading and working with multigenerational organisations of different sizes and scales, and ...