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A M King staff collaborating on a project.
Firms with a strongly integrated multigenerational workforce will experience tremendous power and opportunity for success over the next number of years. Adapting to a multigenerational workforce
W hen I began my professional career in 1986, it was a baby boomer’s world. This generation – born between 1946 and 1964 – was impacting everything about business. Within organizations, “boomers” dominated the workforce and were rapidly ascending to upper management. As a consumer base, this group was setting new records for consumption while redefining business offerings and sales models.
Brian King
Technically a boomer myself, as a young professional it was critical for me to fully understand this largest living generation on many levels. They were my peers, my bosses, and my customers, and my success depended upon their perceptions of my work. I needed to be clear on their expectations – and their expectations alone – when it came to work ethic, job performance, and quality requirements. Today’s young professionals find themselves in a much different situation. Over the past 40 years, the workforce has undergone a dynamic shift. No longer do we have a single older generation aging out and being replaced by the next generation. We now find ourselves in the midst of the greatest multigenerational workforce in history.
Never has business experienced four distinct and unique generations actively engaged in the workforce at the same time. Baby boomers, the youngest now in their late 50s, will remain active in the workforce for the next 20 years. Generation X, a smaller population group ranging in age from early 40s to 55 will have continued careers extending another 30 or more years. The millennial generation, another large sector of the population – primarily children of the boomers – are turning 40 and assuming greater leadership and management roles. And Gen Z, or zoomers, who were born after 1996, has begun to enter the workforce. The most diverse generation ever, this group was raised solely in the age of the internet and digital interaction.
See BRIAN KING, page 4
THE ZWEIG LETTER MARCH 14, 2022, ISSUE 1432
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