“But any group of that size – 20 per cent of the population – is going to have as much diversity within it as any similarities that the fact of being young at a particular time might give them,” Woodman said. And, when you think about it, the 15-odd years that separate popularly conceived generational categories – Boomers, Gen Xs, etc – is in many ways absurdly large.
A Millennial (or Gen Y), for example, could be like me: born in the early 80s, with a childhood full of cassette tapes, Telecom landline phones and exhortations to send a “stamped, self-addressed envelope” to your favourite (standard definition) TV show.
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Or they could be born in the late 1990s, and have grown up knowing a world where the internet and digital technology was utterly ubiquitous. Similarly, a Gen Z could be several years into their career, like you, or still in primary school.
Woodman made it clear, however, that your birthdate is not irrelevant to the world of work. Or, to be more specific, “how you think about your work will be shaped by the time you live in”.
Experiences and conditions specific to a period or place inevitably shape humans. And when they affect a particular group (as opposed to the whole population), they’re what social science researchers call cohort effects.
“If we’re talking about some Gen Zs, then these are people relatively new to the workforce and also people who copped some of the worst effects of the challenges we faced during the pandemic,” he says.
“If employers are treating individuals on their merits and using some kind of … you might want to call it generational intelligence – understanding that the world has changed and experiences will be different – then that’s OK.”
So, answering your question, a serious organisation simply wouldn’t make a hiring decision based on a vulgar stereotype like “all Gen Somethings are lazy” or “all Gen Somethings are entitled”.
They might, however, take into consideration the societal factors – the period and cohort effects – that influence people’s lives. And they could make better-informed decisions based on them.