Canada’s Dirty Little Secret

February 17th 2008

Barbara Moses in her Globe Career article titled Getting Xs and Ys on the same page dated January 25th addresses what she refers to as Canada’s dirty little secret. Older workers, despite organizational chatter about inclusion, feel simply put unwelcome in many organizations. The range of outcomes seems to yield at best a feeling of being undervalued and at worst, being forced into early retirement.

In contrast, younger workplace counterparts appear impatient, feeling career block by the generation above and uncomfortable with the notion of "putting in the time". This youthful impatience is seen as arrogance by the older generation who claim they behaved differently when they were "their" age.

Barbara Moses claims that in fact though these intergenerational tensions are real the differences between the generations are not nearly as big as they are trumpeted to be. People and organizations would be better to realize that people are a far greater function of who they are than how old they are. At Langford and Company Corporate Adventure these intergenerantional differences are illuminated and softened as employess adventure, retreat, workshop and experience speakers together.

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