Changing Communication in the Workplace

We are now experiencing a dramatic shift in what to expect in our workplace. Every 15-20 years or so when the tail end of one generation meets the coming onslaught of the next, we go through this angst where the hand wringing of what these new workers will bring with them. This generational shift seems particularly pronounced because of the technological nature of the shift and the changes in communication it creates.

Being a member of Generation X myself, I remember the early- to mid-1990's Baby Boomer discussions of how to handle those Gen X Slackers. Now that Gen Xers are in management positions, no longer is Gen X a group of slackers; we have come to be seen as a generation which demands a work/life balance.

History may be written by the victors; perspective is all in the hands of who is running the show. I once had my boss, the CEO of the organization and a Boomer, tell me in the same conversation that she found me uncommunicative and not 5-minutes later she told me that I sent her more email than anyone else in the organization. Missing here? You cannot be simultaneously uncommunicative AND send more email than anyone else.

Generation Y is beginning to enter the workforce and Gen X is having a remarkably similar set of issues to those which befell the Boomers trying to figure these Xers out.

We can't figure out the excessive attention on me. We communicate differently while many older X Generation folk are just now getting comfortable with email and figuring out how and when to email as opposed to picking up the phone, Gen Y is more than comfortable with 160 characters complete with a lexicon of words that are designed to be phonetic and parsimonious with space rather than grammatical: Ur, K, brb. They think they're ready for every challenge and can't figure out why they get so many roadblocks.

Other than the multiple means of communication all of these things sound vaguely similar to those complaints I heard of my generation back in the day. And even with the multi-media communication available to the younger set, it wasn't that long ago that I, as a member of Generation X, was hearing the older set complain about the information overload of voice mail and email and hearing news articles that America Online thought that perhaps IM would become a key business tool.

The big difference between I see between myself from many older members of Generation X and the millennial generation is that I consider myself a dual citizen of the analog and the digital, while members of Gen Y are full on natives. I generally get them.

This doesn't mean, however, that everyone my age or frankly of any age knows how to use this technology without making mistakes, and that is not limited to Gen Y: I've heard stories of younger interviewees taking cell phone calls during an interview, but I've also seen older workers interrupting business meetings with THE BOSS to take a call.

There are some things we don't do well with in general. We don't do a good job talking to others about that which we find offensive body odor for instance, because it's just something we expect others to know. We don't do a good job communicating our expectations for courtesy, I think because the standards have been the same across so much time, but technology has changed even those expectations. The chore for Gen Y is to figure out those expectations. The chore for Gen X is to figure out how to communicate those expectations.

Time will tell how much Generation Y changes the workplace the Slackers of Generation X have changed the face of the workplace with more flexible schedules and leave policies. I would suspect that one of the ways this Generation changes the workplace is in how well expectations of communication are addressed. In 10 years or so, we'll know whether or not "Ur" is proper business writing (I suspect that one will not fly) and how we use instant messaging in a business context (this one will). We have to remember though, that Generation Y will be working with us in that time and it won't be too long before they're writing the rules.