WORKPLACE DESIGN • DEMOGRAPHICS • GIG ECONOMY • SPACE AS A SERVICE • EXPERIENCE ECONOMY
Generationally speaking
We are living in a time where things have never moved so quickly, yet we are also living in a time where they will never move so slowly again. We work differently today than we did five years ago, and in the coming five years we will work very differently than we do today. In our rapidly changing world, we are more and more focused on designing workplaces for the unique attributes of people and organizations. But to do so, we need to understand the workforce we will be designing for.
Today’s intergenerational workforce is composed primarily of individuals born between 1945 and 1995, a 50-year span of unprecedented social and technological change. The current workforce can be divided into four groups, or cohorts, who share certain characteristics based on the social influences present in their formative years.

Traditionalists, born from 1925 to 1945, are loyal, formal, respectful of rules and authority, and patriotic. They place duty before pleasure. In the workplace, they highly value job security and being recognized for their experience and dedication.
Boomers, born in the “baby boom” of 1946 to 1964, are cooperative, optimistic, and idealistic. They highly value personal growth and gratification, and they challenge authority, but they were also the first workaholics. In the workplace, they prefer face-to-face conversations, and seek to be valued and respected as people.
Generation X, born during the “baby bust” of 1965 to 1980, are skeptical, independent, self-reliant, and entrepreneurial. They were the “latchkey kids” whose parents divorced and mothers entered the workforce en masse; as young adults they witnessed the AIDS epidemic and the end of the Cold War. They were the first generation that didn’t expect to work for one employer their whole career. In the workplace, they value direct communication and dislike being micromanaged.
Millennials, or Generation Y, born from 1980 to 2000, are realistic, practical, civic-minded, and technologically fluent. Raised by “helicopter parents” in a world made increasingly unstable by both terrorism and the Internet, they are the most highly educated generation yet; one in three of them possesses a college degree. In the workplace, they prefer to be coached rather than managed, and they value challenging work more than high salary or job security.

Over-analyzed Millennials
The arrival of the Millennials coincided with advances in technology that untethered us from the workplace, thereby enabling a rise in mobility. And with greater mobility comes more options, and the need to create compelling spaces that people want to come to, that draw them in, and that engage and empower them. Because now they have choices.
As Millennials mature and move into their next life stages, their desires and needs are shifting. A recent Leesman surveyi showed fewer differences between Millennials and Baby Boomers than were previously believed to exist. Life-stages actually have a bigger impact than generations. Most 20-year-olds are idealistic, ambitious and driven regardless of their generation. That is not something that was unique to the Millennials.
And every generation has embraced and brought new technologies with them to the workplace. The Gen Xers took us from the drafting table to Computer-Aided Design and Drafting (CADD), so a claim of being technology-savvy is not something unique to the Millennials. Change has always been a constant, and each generation has brought in its new ideas, new tools, and new ways of thinking.
The Millennials, however, have probably been the most over-analyzed generation of our time. You can’t define a generation by a snapshot in time; you need to give them time to grow, mature, and establish their own legacy. Yet the Millennials have been judged solely by what they were like in their early 20’s. And yes, they are ambitious, demanding, and filled with high expectations; but those are all attributes of a generation that will drive, and adapt to, change. And that is exactly what we need today to stay relevant and competitive.
Emergence of Gen Z
But a fifth group is on the horizon. Generation Z, born after 2000. The oldest members of this new generation are now in college and poised to emerge on the work scene. They grew up with even more technology than Generation Y did, hence they are also dubbed the “sceenagers,” or the “always-on” generation.
This group is truly the first of the “digital natives.” But the pressure to be always available, 24 hours a day, is creating anxiety, emotional detachment, and interpersonal difficulties resulting from a shortage of real-time, face-to-face human interaction. And their patterns physical inactivity and sleep disturbances are weighing heavily on them as well. In fact, the World Health Organization predicts that “Techno-stress”—the feeling that you need to be connected 24/7—will be the health epidemic of the next decadeii.
If employers want their Gen Z workers to be able to do anything requiring more than a couple of minutes of sustained attention, they should plan for work environments that help the Gen Z’s to dial down, not up. Members of this generation need comforting, soothing environments that enable them to achieve a higher level of thinking and do what they do best.
To help Generation Z, and everyone else, focus on work and aim for simplicity and comfort, we need to provide a variety of work zones tailored for different kinds of tasks, and to create “team-based environments” that support community and a sense of belonging. We need to design spaces that minimize visual clutter, simplify navigation, intensify contrast, and provide plenty of light – both for the aging Gen Xers and the overstimulated Gen Z’s….