Or maybe your Gen X-ers and Baby Boomers are destroying morale. Sometimes it’s hard to tell.
As companies have switched from a seniority system to a meritocracy system, people who are better suited for management roles have landed in the senior roles. This is a great thing for business, but a recent study in Germany found a downside: Older workers don’t like working for younger managers.
Researchers Florian Kunze and Jochen Menges looked at nearly 8000 employees at 61 different German companies. Their key finding was that in cases where there was a large age gap between younger managers and older workers, the employee “tended to report more negative emotions, such as anger or fear.”
To keep reading, click here: Science: Your Millennial Managers are Destroying Morale
I’ve had this issue in the past. Some of my direct reports who were older than I, especially when the age difference was quite large, would try to treat me like their child. While this actually doesn’t bother me in a personal context, in a work context it is highly frustrating – especially when the employee in question has been with the company for a very short amount of time.