Question

What are the implications of generational differences in the workforce and what strategies should companies consider from training and development perspective to cope with generational differences and use them to benefit the company?

Answer 1

Answer: The generational differences in the workforce create a number of issues for the HR department. Just like the cultural differences, the generational differences also impact on the behaviors, thinking and attitudes of the people. The expectations of the workers belonging to different generations differ from each other and they have different levels and basis of motivation. The people from different generations have different experience, physical health and skill level and hence their productivity for every work differs. Based on the age level, the people also have different types of needs depending on their life cycle stages. All these factors result in the different working style and capacity of the workers belonging to different generations. For this reason, the companies need to prepare a different training and developmental strategy for people belonging to different generations. The company needs to understand those generational differences and the needs and characteristics of the employees belonging to different generations. Based on this analysis, there should be a different training and developmental program for each generation depending on their needs, motivation and skill sets. The training and development programs should consider the generational differences.