Though practically every industry has adapted to the increasingly tech-driven society by hiring more IT workers than ever before — most millennials or members of Generation Z — few have adapted their organizations to best serve those new employees.
To do so, yet another new hire may be in order, in the form of a "generational consultant," reports The New York Times Magazine. This position works closely with hiring managers and recruiters to match an applicant's generation-specific skills to an open position.
According to the magazine, these consultants are "the astrologers of the workplace: making broad assessments of a person — and millions like them — based on when they were born and advising hiring managers and human resources accordingly."
Bringing in a generational consultant to help leaders navigate the significant differences between the four generations now coexisting in many workplaces will not only help them best serve each employee's work style, but can also help leaders avoid making false or undeserved assumptions about new employees.
In one case, for example, Gen Z tellers at a bank were struggling with answering the general phone line and redirecting calls, a task seen as simple and commonplace by their older coworkers. When brought in as a generational consultant, Lindsey Pollak, a self-titled "multigenerational workplace expert," pointed out that many members of the generation did not grow up with landlines in their homes and were only used to answering calls on their personal cell phones.
"Everybody doesn't have the same common knowledge," Ms. Pollak told the magazine. "It's important to think about the experiences that people have or don't have before you judge them to be incompetent or lazy."
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