Cross-generational Insights on Work, Life, and Mental Health

We delve into the complexities of managing a multigenerational workforce, discussing how Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z and now Alpha each approach work, life, and mental health differently.

This episode highlights a survey of 2000 people created by Wiley, revealing stark differences in how each generation views mental health and its impact on work performance. 

The hosts argue that there is nuance in all these matters and even if data from a survey says one thing, it might necessarily be true. The discussion further explores the importance of trust and fulfillment at work, the negotiation of worker's rights  we reveal the bold move by the United Auto Workers to negotiate a 32-hour work week, and the ripple effects it might have on the industry. 

As well as issues between generations an creating a culture of trust.

Highlights:

4:42 - Where different generations stand in how they feel about mental health in the workplace.  

9:50 - Lack of trust in the workplace and Brad’s experience with helping change one of his former workplaces to create systems to prevent lack of trust and blame. 

12:53 - The surprsing stats around which generation values fulfillment over money at work. 

16:24 - What the United Auto Workers Union is suggesting to create more work life balance. 

Steve Doyle:

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Brad Herda:

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Welcome to Blue Collar BS, a podcast that busts the popular myth that we can't find good people, highlighting how the different generations of today the boomers, gen X, millennials and Gen Z are redefining work so that the industrial revolution that started in the US stays in the US.

Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Blue Collar BS with Brad and Steve. I obviously am Brad, and that guy over there that's Steve Over on the other side of the screen over there. What's been going on, Mr Doyle, with Life Lately for you?

Well, you know, we got back from vacation a week ago or so, had some good time with charter fishing with my daughter. She caught her first trout. So you know some good stuff, good family times together.

Excellent, excellent. Welcome back to the work life balance here. So good for you guys to get away. I don't leave for a couple weeks and I'll be out of country, which I'm looking very forward to, for our trip to Greece. So what is today's topic, mr Stephen Doyle?

Today we're going to look at an article that was composed by Wiley and the Coyote that was after the Road Runner that never got the Road Runner.

For any younger folks you may not ever understand any of that, but the best cartoon era was Warner Brothers All time.

Yes, all time.

Bugs Bunny, road Runner. All time you want to learn about history, kids, go watch Looney Tunes on YouTube, if it's out there, because it will teach you history and not this biased type history, and it will do it in such a way that, yeah, it might seem bad, but you know what You're going to learn something Absolutely Especially with the Martian hitting the bombs.

I forgot about Marvin the Martian. That's awesome, marvin.

K9. Marvin's my favorite character. In case anybody wants to know but no one really does Anyhow what's today's topic from?

Wiley. So the today's topic is all about four generations at work with our boomers, our Gen X. It fits our show. It does it totally fits our show. But we're going to talk about the unexpected truth.

Okay, unexpected truth, all right. Yep, so in this particular survey that the Wiley group and for those that aren't familiar with Wiley, they do the everything disc and the five behaviors type programs, shameless plug I am part of their organization and receive the email and Steve and I both really believe in disc and emotional intelligence and behavioral styles and things like that as a real thing, so this is very interesting to us. So they had what 2000 people respond to the survey. And what did you find as you went through the numbers? And we see that. See the results of the survey right 2000 people, 8% were boomers, 9% were Gen Z, 36% X, 48% millennial. Why do you think that the respondents on the either end of that didn't happen?

Well, it's probably because they sent an email and nobody picked up the phone when they when they didn't call, and for Gen Z's there was no Snapchat involved, so I think most of them had to figure out what email was.

Right. I would truly believe that it's going to be a very Gen X and millennial dominant categories, because it was probably an email that went out and said, hey, take our survey, and you know, the boomer didn't care and the Gen Z is like I'm survey email link. No, that's cybersecurity, right, can't click that link.

Yep. So, as we go through this, what do you think resonated with Gen Zs and millennials the most and baby boomers the least?

Well, there's a lot of things there. From that perspective, I would. I would go into the potentially into the work life balance, I would go down to mental health. I would go into a lot of those other areas that have now entered the workforce. We've got, you know, all this time off. We've got all these extra holidays, organizations, unlimited PTO Okay, great.

Right. So, according to this article, the mental health was of the greatest concerns on impact to Gen Zs and millennials. So 23% of millennials indicated that it's a great deal of impact to their ability to perform work and 29% of Gen Zs said it was a great deal of impact to their ability to perform their work, which is interesting. But let's look on the other side Gen or baby boomers. 77% of baby boomers that did respond said mental health does not impact their ability to perform work at all.

Moderately true, mostly false. Yeah, right, because we're all humans. And now, you know, old, curmudgeoned individuals may not think that their mental approach to being pissed off at their boss or you know, the boomer that's working the floor, that has the millennial leader, that's all pissed off, you know what he may not feel that he's slowing down, but he's slowing down, you know, maybe unintentionally, intentionally. There's definitely a performance there from that perspective.

And I mean when we really look at the different generations, we look at social norms, and probably what I mean by that is how we were raised. For those of us that are older Gen Xs slash boomers okay, brad, how we were brought up. We weren't necessarily brought up to share our emotions and even talk about what we were struggling with. We often, if we were struggling with stuff, we hit it and you just literally sucked it up cupcake, because there's another. You have to get your work done. We don't have time for this mamby-pamby, humpty, dumpty bullshit that you're so worried about. You know, because your mommy didn't love you and now you can't perform your work because she didn't do your laundry and make you breakfast and, you know, give you a pat on the back and rub your tummy before you went out to work.

We don't have time for that shit. Wow, that was a rant.

Wait, what? What's that?

That was definitely a rant, you know. That seems like that might have hit a very close emotional button for you, steve. Did your mom tell you she loved you today? No, are you kidding me? Is that why we're feeling this energy, are you?

kidding me, I'm a wooden spoon, survivor motherfucker, whatever.

Anyhow, but so so here's, I think here's where I think is also about that particular part of the survey that's very interesting. There's the honesty approach of that. Now, do I think some of those numbers might be overinflated? Do I think that Gen Z is truly understand what that means yet, because we're 26 and younger right now? Maybe not. That might be more inflated because that's just the group think, or the latest and greatest thing that we should be talking about. Do I think they're more honest with? Yeah, it's important to them, absolutely yeah. Do I think the boomer that 77% have said hey, this is yeah, no, no F and way. Are they being honest with themselves? Absolutely not, right, yeah, this I thought was a very interesting question as well. To what extent did a hostile work environment impact your ability to perform work? Moderate to a great deal 24% on the baby boomers and 24% on the Gen Z. So they're equal Both ends of the spectrum, hostile work environment. They're equally believing that there's a environment that's negative towards them on both ends of the spectrum.

Yeah, and what isn't shown or highlighted is it's followed by 22%. Of millennials believe that as well. So when we look at, when we dive down, so I'm the problem apparently. That you're the problem. Yes, yes, cause you know, us Gen Xers are not the problem at all. Oh, wow, I'm the problem, I'm the problem.

I'm the problem. Why, okay, okay, wow.

So, when we break it down, when looking at the information that, we have.

Did you just get your nails done?

I did, I did you just get my nails done. Yep, yep, they're all pointed, they're all painted black, it's great. So we look at the common drivers of a hostile work environment across these. You know different generations and they've all responded of saying, starting with a lack of communication, destructive conflict, poor work-life balance and, at the end, lack of trust between colleagues.

That lack of trust is huge. It's huge, mm-hmm. It is the one thing that I've been blessed to be part of inside an organization where there was no trust, and I just told the story to a client the other day. When we're doing some, some disc work as well, it's like our war room. We probably had at one point 60 people in there, ranging from directors to managers, supervisors, individual contributors. Everybody's in this room for two hours a day, and it essentially was every day, two hours, 60 people in the room just trying not to blame each other, not to take the.

It was like hot potato it's not my potato, yeah Right, yep, that well will be done tomorrow. Okay, what's going on? Next guy? And then we would just do the same thing over and over again, and through a bunch of, through a bunch of exercises, a bunch of training, a bunch of leadership activity, we were able to get that down to like 12 people in a room, 45 minutes, yep. Well, then we're running late. It's going to be out in three weeks? Okay, cool, and we trust that it's going to be done in three weeks. Not, yeah, I'll tell you it's tomorrow, cause that's what you want to hear. And then, when it doesn't happen tomorrow. Well, you know, I wasn't my fault, was purchasing fault, right, they didn't get it in on time. Well, you knew a week ago it wasn't. What did you do? Nothing, you know. So we built up that sense of trust and when it worked and and when you go through that and you build that, it is absolutely fucking amazing to be part of. It is. It is awesome when you have an environment full of trust.

It is unbelievable, honestly. Just the sense of confidence that the organization has and the stuff you're able to accomplish, versus the amount of time that you spend just trying to make sure you're not going to be the next one stabbed in the back or stabbed in the throat.

Right it's, it's spent on focusing on what matters. You're, you trust each other to know that, yep, that's the date and you can build a plan, and you're not building contingency plan, bcdefg, you're not doing a 75 different contingencies because you trust what people are doing and saying and what's happening. Yeah, absolutely, it is totally awesome.

Yeah, so get this question here. So, from the, from the survey, which generations do you think that it's? They have said that it's more important to have a personally fulfilling job than a job that pays well.

I would say it would be the two younger version, the younger generations, the millennials and Z's.

And I would have thought that too. But what this survey shows is that baby boomers and Gen X at 77% and 76% strongly agree with that, more so than millennials and our Gen Z's.

That is mind boggling Wow.

I just, I'm still just stunned by that statistic there.

So let's see what the report says. While the older generations report the highest numbers, the majority of all respondents said they agree strongly that personal fulfillment at work trumps a big paycheck. That is, that's a bold statement there. Cotton.

Yeah, absolutely, I'm just. I'm still just spinning that baby boomers and Gen Xers lead the way on that one.

Yeah, that is just my number, given that they weren't even. Yeah, I don't know what to say on that because that's not necessarily the experiences I've seen within my, within my work environment.

Yeah.

Absolutely, but let's think about that for a moment, though, if I know how the questions were phrased. When we think about quality of work, pride in work, look at, look at the construction world today right.

Yeah, I mean, once we reflect on it, yeah, it does make sense. So let's look at the next question here Work-life balance. Which generations do you believe thought it was essential to have work-life balance?

Oh, that's definitely going to be the two younger generations for sure, although I would say that that is slowly homogenizing big word across the generations, because there's an expectation now that, hey, the Xers and boomers have understood that maybe the millennials didn't get it wrong. Maybe they just went about it the wrong way to infiltrate and make change in the workforce and COVID accelerated a shit ton of that, for sure, from this work, from home status and all those other things but maybe they didn't get it so wrong.

Right, and as we look at the current work environment and what COVID has done, some of the positive aspects of that is it's created the opportunity on a mass scale to be able to have the work from home work-life balance, where now it's almost expected that employers start to look at a hybrid schedule more often than not of right.

In roles that can require it Right.

I mean, there's times when you can't and some some professions where you can't be in a hybrid environment. It's either all in or not.

Well, so you're in Detroit, right? I don't know how much you're following the negotiations that are going on now. Obviously, when this is released by the two, maybe negotiations are over with the United Auto Workers or not, but essentially they're trying to negotiate a 32 hour work week.

Yeah, more so for the mental health and the brakes of anything than anything else, so that there actually is work-life balance.

Right, because you can't run a production line remotely. You just don't do that because I still have there's still people involved in that process, so they'll be very interested to see how that negotiation plays out for sure, absolutely. So, steve, do you feel understood? You know Brad by the other generations.

By other generations, not even close. Do you feel understood Brad being a boomer? Do you feel understood?

I am not. I am not a boomer Not, yes, right at the tail, right crossover. But yeah, do I have those tendencies In many cases? Sure, do I get others? Yes, do they all get me? Probably not, but the results of the survey are freaking ridiculous. I know 80% across, 88% for Z, millennial boomers and 93% for X say hey, colleagues of different generations, understand me, I am absolutely shocked by that because when I talk, when I have leaders who have younger individuals or leaders who have older individuals in different generations, they're like I don't get why this is or that isn't, and the common sense argument keeps coming up and oh, they're dumb as a rock because they just don't get it.

Well, yeah, exactly, I'm just like even with the construction client I have, and they're hiring a lot more Gen Zs right now, and even the millennials that are in the business are struggling to understand what is going on with the Gen Zs. They do not understand them at all.

So that was just a bizarre answer to me. So I don't know what the question was or the category of questions that were there, but in the end of the day, we have four generations in the workforce. It is something that is new to us. It is something that is changed because we can, even if we go back to you, know the boomers and the greatest generation and sound generation yes, they were all there, but we didn't have all this diversity, and the economy of things that are going on from technology and life was simpler. All these other things and the interactions and activities and the reason for work was very different than it is today and we just have to get through it.

And, at the end of the day, we need leaders to understand that the generations are different and they are looking for different things. And when you build your business to support that and train and educate and build out career paths and set expectations and put all those things together, you're going to have an amazing, amazing business. Absolutely. It's not simple, but yet it's not overly complicated either if you're willing to do the work, completely agree. So, mr Doyle, this was a fantastic topic for today and I am looking forward to seeing what topic we bring up next in our next Blue Collar BS with Brad and Steve.

So have a awesome rest of your day sir Yep, you as well, sir, have a good one.

Alright, thanks Bye.