Recently president of Brick Marketing, Nick Stamoulis wrote and article on Marketing Pilgrim outlining the vast difference of communication efforts between Baby Boomers, Gen X and Gen Y individuals. If you own a business or have worked at a company where these three generations share work space and lines of communication you will know that there are probably many different challenges that occur on any day when it comes to communication. All three generations are slowly starting to overlap the amount of social marketing used for communication but the frequencies and skill levels are still very far apart. Lets take a look and see how the three generations vary.
Baby Boomers have spent a great deal of their life using face to face, mail and telephone communication efforts. This is what they have grown custom to and to adopt vastly new lines of communication is going to be difficult to integrate into their daily lives. Gen X are a bit more savvy when it comes to technology. Gen X is mostly worried about creating a healthy balance in their daily life pattern and tend to use IM, cell phone and email mostly for communication. Gen Y are very much into texting, IM and email for most of their communication efforts. Gen Y are idea factories and just want their ideas to be considered and valued by other employees.
Management at many different sized and shaped companies has been willingly trying to find a happy medium for everyone to be able to communicate efficiently. If a Gen Y’er is trying to IM a Baby Boomer who never has their IM on and check their email just a few times a day the lack of communication can quickly disrupt performance in the office. Once employees start to get frustrated in the workplace it simply just gets worse, especially if management ignores the signs. Is the speed of technology the problem? When the Baby Boomer generation was at the age of a Gen Y’er things where much different and technological advancement did not occur so quickly. When they did everyone had much more time to adapt and apply the new type of communication to their daily lives. Now with social networking websites creating new gathering places and platforms for communication the generation gaps are starting to take a toll.
