Boomer vs Millennial: What You Need To Know About Training Across Generations

Your Millennial employees are so techy, they’ll just learn organically. Wait, what?

Discussing generational stereotypes and the need to conduct training across all groups. Make sure to check your assumptions.

One of the awesome things about hiring Millennials is that you can save a fortune in technical training costs. After all, they practically came out of the womb knowing how to run a computer. It’s so much easier than those Gen Xers or, worse Baby Boomers, who you have to thoroughly train on each new system, right?

Well, if that doesn’t get your stereotype hackles up, this will: It’s not even a stereotype based in truth. While it’s true that Millennials learned to use computers much younger than your older employees, they aren’t that great at it. In fact, a recent survey of global Millennials showed that US Millennials’ tech skills were “absymal” compared to their global counterparts. Abysmal.

To keep reading, click here: Boomer vs Millennial: What You Need To Know About Training Across Generations

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6 thoughts on “Boomer vs Millennial: What You Need To Know About Training Across Generations

  1. I hate all of these millennial vs. genX vs. boomer articles. I think studying generational differences is worthwhile, and I think these articles hit on some interesting points, but for the most part, I think they are categorically wrong and misinformed. This is for 2 reasons: 1) it is too soon to have a final word on what “millennial” even means, and thus the term means a 1000x different things but not necessarily what it should, and 2) I think it is too soon to “close out” the beginning and end years of GenX and Millenials.

    I was born in 1981. If I was going to generalize “my” generalization, I would say things like: childhood mid-80s/early 90s, teens in 90s, shaped by rapidly changing social norms (affirmative action, decrease in conservative views, beginning of self esteem “training” in school) and changes in music/technology (records to cassettes to CDs, big-hair rock/bubble pop to mainstream grunge, rave, and rap) of late 80s-early 2000s, member of last generation to grow up without internet or cell phones but not the last to grow up without social media, the last group to have established careers before the great recession.

    If the above was the “millennial” stereotype, I’d have no issue with the term. But the more common millennial description is: coming of age in the 2000s, underemployment, short attention span, coming of age with social media, high expectations at work, everyone had a trophy blah blah blah.

    Not that some of those items aren’t true for some people, but I don’t think society can have a productive conversation on millenials unless it redoes step #1 of any stereotyping process – properly defining the people you are talking about!

    None of this is a critique of EvilHR, but more of the content of the links.

  2. Computers have been used in the workplace for decades. Millennials are the first generation to use computers for surfing the web and entertainment. And as Stevie G demonstrated, Millennials seem to struggle with reading comprehension.

  3. I don’t see how Stevie G is struggling with reading comprehension. He makes a very valid point – how can a 34-year-old with 12 years of job experience – and years more if they didn’t go to university – be validly compared to an 18-year-old? Not only is the 34-year-old is well into his career, but he’s old enough biologically to be the 18-year-old’s parent.

    As he says, life is completely different for those who grew up as a child in the age of wifi/iPads, etc versus those who first got Internet at the age of 14. And it was dial up. No Buzzfeed in the Nineties…

    I think one key issue is that the way we classify generations no longer works. The world has changed beyond recognition since the Nineties, and the Internet has been the driving force. Everything is developing far more rapidly than it used to, and we’re seeing a huge difference in the childhoods of people born within 16 years of each other – the older Millennials have more in common with Gen X than their younger counterparts.

    1. That’s not a new phenomenon though. My parents were born in 1944 and 1945–just before the baby boomers. The “silent” generation. But, they have far more in common with the baby boomers–they don’t remember WWII–they were babies.

      They are just categories and there’s not a lot to be made by strictly labeling everyone. That’s the point of the article–don’t make assumptions based on age.

  4. There are certainly some valid things to be said, in general, about each age group, but I wonder if it is more of a function of physical age rather than generational stereotype. I was born in 1971 but remember very little of the 1970s. My decade of growth and memories was the 80s. And in the early 90s, I joined the workforce and almost immediately my generation was given the label, “Slackers.” And all the handwringing and articles written on how the generations before didn’t think we got it and between the grunge movement and staying longer in our parents’ homes, we were declared lost. Then Kurt Cobain died and suddenly “things got real” and we stopped focusing on that. And the “we” is the public at large.
    Flash forward 20 years and the millennials are now being accused of the same thing. What did we have in common with them now? Late teens and early 20s. I dare say, and yes I do dare, that the Boomers were accused of something similar in the late 60s and early 70s.
    So, Steve G. has a great point, it isn’t a good thing to make these overarching stereotypes because I’ve encountered quite a few millennials who couldn’t use a computer if they had to. Texting and social media notwithstanding, as a generation, they may be accustomed to seeing it but not using it in business.

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