Diversity in Work Force: Gender or Generation?

We discuss all the time that we should have diversity in workforce. Most of the time when we talk about diversity, we tend to speak or understand it as gender diversity. Means we should have more women in workforce. There too why not have women in different roles or even higher hierarchies also.

Now, another thing in that connection is always distinguish the generations that we operate in businesses- the baby boomers are the older guys usually, who are CEOs and top managers in the executive suite. They have no digital experience at all, but they are ready to learn about it too.

Then there is Generation X, those are populating all the managers around the jobs they are not at the CEO Level and executive suites. We can update these generations with different ICF Certified Coaching or C-Suite Coaching available. Then there is Generation Y- the Millennials, who have been the recent hires, in their 20s, digitally oriented and trained people. Then some of your newest hires are centennials and it’s a nice mix. These Younger generations can be equipped by executive coaching or Leadership Coaching.

A company without millennials and centennials, I would not like to invest in or bet upon. But the main point is that I want to make is every generation has lived through a different set of experiences and that’s why there may be intergenerational breakdowns and intentions. I mean, baby boomers grew up with two world wars and then the music, the social movements were what they were at the time.

Its very important to have right mix of people with different generations. In fact, it is much more important than the bringing women diversity. Wherever we find some gap in these different generations, we can support them with executive coaching and leadership development.

But the centennials grew up with covid and climate change, the brands, they know about, the movies they have seen, and the songs they have heard are all different. Its very important to compete well for millennials and centennials, as a company and to realise they are different than the values of the predecessors.

There are three values these younger people have-

  1. They want a good balance of work, family and friends. Its not all work. work stops at five o’clock in many cases.
  2. They grew up with environmental issues, and they favour environmental protection, government regulation, no polluted air, and so on.
  3. They even want their company to be concerned with a social problem or two, like poverty or hunger, homelessness, so they have a different mindset.

They are going to push their company to show that the brand and the company shows a caring for more than just profit-making.

Baby Boomers:                             1946- 1964

Generation X:                               1965-1980

Generation Y (Millennials):        1981-1996

Generation Z (Centennials):      1997-2009