Managing Generational Differences in the Workplace

Psychologists maintain that humans experience two kinds of happiness: hedonic and eudaimonic. Hedonic happiness is food and drink and all those things that provide temporary delight. The problem with hedonic happiness, of course, is that the more you have, the more you want -- so it's fundamentally unsatisfying. Eudaimonic happiness is different; it is about a sense of purpose and is experienced when we can contribute to something bigger than ourselves. At its best, this is what teamwork provides. It enables us to build something -- a product, a business -- that we could not construct alone. The best companies take this a stage further, either by giving employees time off to work in the community or by allocating a percentage of profits to charitable organizations. National Van Lines supports a whole host of charities this way. Neutral Posture takes it a step further and lets the employees vote on which charity to support each quarter. Seeing your company do good in the world provides very high levels of personal, and job, satisfaction and commitment.

These three key ingredients -- fairness, stretch and community -- are not generationally specific. Neither are they gender or culturally specific: they're as true for women as for men, for Europeans as for Americans. They will never eliminate the differences you observe between generations and cultures but they do offer the possibility of unifying all those disparate personalities and needs. And the employee who wants to leave to go off trekking? Well, you may never be able to stop her -- but if she's experienced fairness, stretch and community, she may just trek back one day.