Retiring the Generation Gap: How Employees Young and Old Can Find Common Ground

Using these two themes, we developed a number of questions

to focus our research in this area. Our goal was to answer the ques-

tion of supposed differences in loyalty more concretely and, ulti-

mately, to help organizations create an atmosphere in which people

want to be loyal (as in “work hard” and “stay a long time”).

With regard to what people think about how long people

should stay with an organization, we developed the following

questions:

Are the generations different in whether they want to stay with

their organization for the rest of their career?

Are the generations different in how long they think people should

stay with their organization?

Are the generations different in terms of whether respondents

themselves are going to stay with their organization?

Do younger generations change jobs more frequently than older

generations did at the same age?

With regard to the question of how hard people work for their

organization, we asked concrete questions:

Are the generations different in terms of how many hours they

work in a week?

Are the generations different in terms of how frequently they work

on weekends?

Research

We asked people whether they want to stay with their organization,

how long they think people should stay with an organization, how

many jobs they’ve had (and over what time period in their lives),

how many hours they work per week, and how many weekends

they work per month.

Are the generations different in terms of wanting to stay

with their organization for the rest of their career?

We asked people to respond to the statement, “I would like to stay

120 RETIRING THE GENERATION GAP

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with this organization for the rest of my working life.” What we

found is that people from every generation said they would like to

stay with their organization; the older they were, the more likely

they were to say that (see Figure 7.1). Similarly, people higher in

the organization said that more than people lower in the organi-

zation (Figure 7.2).

Are the generations different in terms of how long they

think people should stay with their organization?

We often hear people say that one of the biggest differences be-

tween the generations is that they have different beliefs about what

are the minimum and maximum lengths of time that an employee

should stay with an organization. We have heard people say that

younger people are more likely to think that there is no minimum

amount of time they should spend at a job (they can leave after

three months if they don’t like it, and it won’t matter), while also

believing that there is a maximum amount of time they should

spend with any organization (you shouldn’t stay more than five

years or you’ll get stale). We have also heard people say that, con-

LOYALTY DEPENDS ON THE CONTEXT, NOT ON THE GENERATION 121

Figure 7.1. Percentage of Respondents Agreeing with the

Statement, “Yes, I Would Like to Stay with This Organization

for the Rest of My Working Life,” by Generation.

Silents

Early Boomers

Late Boomers

Early Xers

Late Xers

70

80

Percentage of respondents

0

60

50

40

30

10

20

100

90

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versely, older generations think there is a minimum amount of

time to be spent with any one organization to show that you’re not

flaky (at least a couple of years, preferably more), but that the

longer you spend with an organization, the better you look to

other potential employers.

So we asked people these questions: “What is the minimum

amount of time people should spend with an organization?” and

“What is the maximum amount of time people should spend with

an organization?”

Minimum Time. What the respondents told us is very different from

what we hear people saying. The most frequent response from peo-

ple of all generations is that there is no minimum amount of time

that it is appropriate to stay with an organization (see Table 7.1).

Contrary to conventional wisdom, it was the Early Xers who were

the most likely to say that one to two years was the minimum

amount of time to spend with an organization. Silents, Early

Boomers, and Late Xers were more likely to say that there was no

minimum time. Therefore the data show that the minimum time

122 RETIRING THE GENERATION GAP

Figure 7.2. Percentage of Respondents Agreeing with the

Statement, “Yes, I Would Like to Stay with This Organization

for the Rest of My Working Life,” by Organizational Level.

Top and Executive

Upper managemen

t

Management

Professional

70

80

Percentage of respondents

0

60

50

40

30

10

20

100

90

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