When Skip Leonard first arrived at Clarkson University to begin his job as vice president for philanthropy and alumni relations, he found that some of his staff members were living in the past.
Two of his oldest workers, he says, had an elaborate system for tackling their daily correspondence.
“They wanted to handwrite it down, have someone transcribe it—because they weren’t that good as typists—and then get it back to them so they could handwrite changes,” he says.
The baby-boomer employees said they were uncomfortable with computers and wanted to avoid them, but their system was unnecessarily taxing to the fund-raising office’s lean staff resources. Mr. Leonard, 50, who came to Clarkson four years ago (and left his post at the end of August), says he immediately got the workers computer training so they could work more efficiently and without inconveniencing colleagues.
By contrast, he noticed, younger workers sometimes relied excessively on e-mail, even to broach delicate topics with coworkers.
With his staff, he says, “we talked about getting up out of our seats and going to talk to that person face to face, because that’s how you foster a good environment, and that’s how you foster relationships. That’s one of the challenges for our younger folks.”
Waiting Their Turn
Varying levels of tech savvy and clashing communications styles may be the most obvious ways in which tensions between workers of different age groups manifest themselves, but they are far from the only ones.
Four generations occupy many American offices: the so-called silent generation, born during the Great Depression and World War II; the baby boomers, the 80-million-strong group born from 1946 to 1964; Generation X, who arrived from 1965 to roughly 1981; and the Millennials, the twentysomethings, sometimes referred to as Generation Y, whose numbers rival those of the boomers. And the mix, say nonprofit employers and management experts, is not always smooth.
In fact, many observers say that tensions between the various generations are heating up at nonprofits.
“Generational diversity seems to have bubbled almost to the top for all of us,” says Deborah W. Foster, 56, executive vice president and chief diversity officer at United Way Worldwide, in Alexandria, Va., who regularly discusses challenges with peers at other big charities.
Diana Aviv, 58, president of Independent Sector, in Washington, a coalition of nonprofit organizations, echoes the notion that generational issues are on the minds of many charity and foundation workers these days. Among the concerns she checks off: baby boomers preparing (or not) to hand off leadership, Millennials demanding increased authority, and members of Generation X feeling ignored.
“I’m hearing a lot from Generation X people saying, ‘We’re increasingly feeling like a skipped generation, that all boomers are worried about how they bring Millennials in and how they create work-life balance for Millennials. But what about us? Are we chopped liver?’” Ms. Aviv says. “The question on the table for them is: When does our leadership turn happen?”
Inescapably, people are shaped by the times in which they grew up and often share certain characteristics, observes Jamie Notter, a management consultant in Rockville, Md., who has worked with nonprofit and other organizations on multigenerational issues. For example, he says, members of Generation X, like himself, who grew up among diminished expectations after the social revolutions of the 1960s, tend to be less trusting than the baby boomers.
The charity world over all can’t afford to squander the creative energy people of varying ages generate, says Ms. Aviv, especially once the baby boomers begin to retire, leaving the younger workers to fill their roles.
“We’ll be competing with government and the corporate sector for those folks,” she says. Savvy management—including offering abundant opportunities and competitive salaries—is particularly important when dealing with Millennials, Ms. Aviv says, because they are the most “sector-neutral.” “If we don’t reach out and include them in a meaningful way, the best of them, the cream of the crop, will simply go to other sectors.”
She adds, “The very future of the sector’s viability is at risk if we don’t take these steps.”
Postponed Exits
Before the recession hit, employment-trend prognosticators foresaw a wave of baby boomer retirements that would shake up organizations and create room at the top for younger employees to advance. But Mr. Notter and other experts say that the wave is not starting to roll yet in earnest.
The bad economy is partly to blame for so many older workers postponing retirement, Mr. Notter says. But the way baby boomers structure their lives is also a factor; unlike previous generations, they mix work, education, and leisure throughout their lives, rather than compartmentalizing them into discrete eras.
Boomers may shift into part-time or advisory roles as they age, rather than quitting work entirely, he says: “I think they’ll still be part of organizations.”
Another reason the boomers aren’t going away entirely, he says, is that they can’t: Generation X is much smaller in number, and there aren’t going to be enough people in that age group to fill all of the boomers’ empty chairs.
But Generation X is one marked more by skepticism than patience. “I think Generation X feels like it’s been stalled by the baby boomers,” says Debra Fiterman, 29, an associate at BridgeWorks, a consultancy in Minneapolis that focuses on multigenerational issues and works with nonprofit as well as for-profit clients.
“Baby boomers are very optimistic, very competitive. They want to do bigger, better—we’re going to build it, here we go! And the Milliennials are very much that same way,” says Ms. Fiterman. “But we’ve got Gen Xers in the middle who are saying, ‘Wait, are we doing the right thing?’ They’re more skeptical, more independent, more entrepreneurial, more questioning of authority. And it’s easy for baby boomers and Millennials to just say, ‘Oh, you guys are being naysayers.’”
Work and Leisure
Like their elders, Millennials also pose a challenge to managers.
Many of them, observes Mr. Notter, integrate the different strands of their lives—work, education, and leisure—into each day. They may check work-related e-mail before coming to the office, where they participate in an online education seminar, or take a long break midday to go to the gym.
“Boomers, and sometimes Xers, have a problem with that because they tend to affiliate work with your location,” he says. “If you’re not in the office, you’re not working. As opposed to, Is the work getting done?”
For their part, Millennials, says Ms. Fiterman, feel frustrated because they are used to being consulted in their own families about big decisions. Also, young people are accustomed to a great degree of independence because they have always been able to use the Internet to get information and connect with others. They may feel slighted when their authority is curtailed on the job or when they don’t understand how their entry-level or junior-level jobs serve the organization’s mission.
More nonprofit organizations, Mr. Notter says, need to become more transparent about how they make decisions.
“We need to have better conversations about this stuff,” he says.
He elaborates, “One of the capacities we lack is the ability to talk about why our culture is the way it is or why our structure is the way it is or why we divide the work the way we do.”
Unlike previous generations, Millennials may not see staying with one organization—or even staying in the nonprofit world—as a key career goal, and managers might mistake that flexibility for a lack of commitment, says Robby Rodriguez, 35, executive director of the SouthWest Organizing Project, an advocacy group in Albuquerque, and co-author of Working Across Generations.
“We should assume that younger people working in the nonprofit sector are committed to positive change, but they might not do that at one particular organization,” he says. “They might express that commitment by working for different causes or different types of organizations.”
Mr. Notter also cautions managers not to fixate on longevity. “If your goal is to do things differently so that the people who are in your organization who are young stay there for 20 years, I think you’re missing the point,” he says.
The churn at some organizations has resulted in greater diversity in employee backgrounds, he says, with workers coming to charities from the business world and government.
Young People in a Hurry
Millennials have been accused of being prematurely eager to ascend to leadership roles, but young people have always sought to make their mark, notes Rhea Turteltaub, 50, vice chancellor for external affairs at the University of California at Los Angeles.
But if Millennials are truly in a hurry to climb the career ladder, especially in fund-raising offices like hers, she says, “it’s up to us who have been in the profession longer to teach the most important thing, which is that development is a patient and thoughtful and strategic process. And you need to adapt to that environment in order to do this work well.”
However, that idea cuts both ways, she says.
“Those same practices that we employ when we’re working with donors and volunteers is exactly what we need to employ with our own work force,” says Ms. Turteltaub. “Meaning, we need to understand each of these employees as individuals, understand what makes them tick.”
Sometimes too much is made, she suggests, of the notion that people born into various generations have certain immutable characteristics.
“Anytime we generalize about a group of people, we’re probably missing an understanding of who they are as individuals,” she says.
“Every employee wants to be recognized, to be seen, to be acknowledged, and to be appreciated,” Ms. Turteltaub says. “No matter how old they are.”
Generations Now on the Job
- Silent Generation: Born during the Great Depression and World War II
- Baby Boomers: Born 1946 to 1964
- Generation X: Born 1965 to 1981
- Millennials: Born since 1981
