I hear the alarm sounded over and over that “for the first time, we have five generations in the workforce!” It really isn’t true.
Since we’ve had organizations, we’ve had individuals across a broad age span working in them. We could argue that prior to minimum working age and typical retirement ages, the age range was even broader than it is today.
Older workers mentor younger workers, that’s how we’ve always transmitted knowledge and created continuity. In modern times, we’ve generally had people working from their late teens to their mid-60s. So what’s the problem?
Perhaps we need to get more explicit about the definition of “a generation.” A generation, demographically speaking, is 20 to 25 years. Do we have five demographic ...
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