Mixing and Managing Four Generations of Employees

            During my time student teaching, I had the opportunity to work alongside different generations at the school. From my experiences there, I definitely noticed the different attitudes, behaviors, expectations, habits, and motivational buttons for different teachers. The analogy this article offers of a large family dinner and how the conversation usually turns to, “I remember the old days” or “I remember when.” This is another thing that I’m sure many people have experienced, making this analogy very fitting. I have never thought about lifestyle characteristics with each generation. Looking at some of them, whether it’s how they communicate or how they spend their money or if they just save it up, I learned a lot about each generations characteristics. Things like maybe not spending Christmas together as a family were really interesting to think about because every year my own family gets together to enjoy each other’s company. I think this article brings up an interesting case in the work place. When you have different generations in one work place, it’s possible that their will eventually be some sort of disagreement or altercation between employees. When one generation finds work to be a challenge and contract when the newer generation sees it as a means to an end, those two may have some sort of conflict with how they each do their job. Or if an older generation sees that they aren’t as excited as they are for their work and creates some sort of conflict that way. Thinking about different generations in the work place is, again, something that I have never thought of. Not exactly anyway. I have noticed older generations and how they do things. I also noticed how a lot of the time, I may not agree with the way they do things.