Comparing Boomers to Millennials
The next time you’re in the office, take a look at your colleagues as they enter first thing in the morning. Do the older employees seem to saunter in, coffee in hand, looking relaxed and carefree while the younger ones enter more timidly, nervously looking at the clock? In a study surrounding work/life balance among Millennials (Generation Y) and Boomers, results showed that Millennials are more likely to be stressed and irritable at work.
With the economy in the state that it’s in, most people are lucky to even have a job. And when middle-aged applicants with Masters degrees are going up against Millennials only a few years out of college, it creates a sense of anxiety in the younger set that they have to constantly prove their value even beyond working hours. There’s no time to come in and chat with colleagues in the break room; from the moment they arrive and sometimes long after they’ve gone home for the night, they’re constantly worrying about proving their worth to the company.
In the study, 57 percent of Millennials felt “irritated” at work as compared to 34 percent of Generation X feeling “resigned” and 40 percent of Baby Boomers feeling “productive.”
The study also shows that when it comes to blending work with personal time, 38 percent of Millennials felt “anxious” as opposed to eight percent of Baby Boomers and 13 percent of Generation X. The numbers are hugely disparate amongst generations.
Will I have a job tomorrow?
Many Millennials feel anxious about their job security when compared to their older, more experienced counterparts. If the most experience you’ve had is a few college internships and entry-level positions and you’re competing with a 10-year ex-senior manager who worked at a Fortune 500 company, you’d question your security as well. As an employer or a team member, it’s always good to keep this in mind when dealing with younger employees and remind them that they were hired for a reason.
You know that you don’t have the budget to spend on incompetent workers; you only hire people who will be of value to the company. Because Millennials are more likely to question themselves and become stressed, they often lose sight of this.
Encourage them to work hard and to go above and beyond but also remind them their value isn’t determined by their age. There’s no need to stress as long as they continue to perform and exhibit the winning qualities that they were hired for.
