They are the alphabet generations, in many cases our children, but they are also members of our workplace. Baby boomers know them as Generations X and Y. And due to the financial disruption that has affected many of our retirement plans, we will be working and sharing the workplace with these generations for a much longer time than was first thought. Two members of Generation X, Julie Bozzell and Christine Sellers, offer comments on my observations.
X vs. Y
Actually, they could be siblings, as there is only a mere year or two that separates these two groupings. Gen Xers are usually considered to have been born between 1965 and 1976, whereas the Gen Yers were born between 1977 and about 1998. Both are the offspring of the baby boomers or the "love generation," but their births occurred at different cycles in that generation's life span.
Gen X, also known as the "baby bust generation," due to the drastic drop in the birthrate following that of the boomer generation, is considered self-reliant and individualistic. They were conceived to younger parents, just starting and probably struggling with careers. Many are the result of divorce and often tagged "latchkey children." In many cases, they saw their parents suffer through job insecurities and job layoffs. Pragmatic and practical, they tend to mistrust institutions and want expedited career growth with immediate fast track remuneration. Although this generation tends to take employment seriously, it rejects rules. It tends to be casual and value flexibility and freedom.
Gen Y, on the other hand is a product of the later cycle of the boomers, during the prosperity years. They are often referred to as the "echo boomers," relating to the size of their population. This generation is three times the size of their predecessor generation and was raised by more mature, established parents, growing up with nurturing and amenities. They are seen as optimistic, yet realistic, indifferent to institutions and inclined to rewrite the rules. They are accustomed to multitasking as they grew up, juggling sports, school, and social interests. They are the "trophy kids," where participation in sporting competitions meant that everyone was entitled to a "thanks for participating trophy."
Due to the times and manner in which they were raised (one growing up with the end of the Cold War, grunge music, and the emergence of AIDS, and the other with Britney Spears, Harry Potter, and the Jonas Brothers), these two generations seem to be opposites of the spectrum and yet the two share a workplace not just with boomers, but with one another.
Julie: I am of the Gen X generation and I think that in many ways I fit that profile. I am a strongly self-reliant multitasker who became acquainted and comfortable with technology at a young age. My family was one of the first to have an Apple computer at home. I was also the first of my friends to get on the Internet.
Christine: I was born later in 1976 (1977 is considered the beginning of Gen Y), and so I fall at the tail end of Gen X, but I learned technology like a Gen Yer, if that makes any sense.
And they share more than just a workplace. They share a view on communicating.
Social Media
Social media include online technologies such as wikis, Twitter, instant messaging, podcasts and more. Social media have become the focus of corporate America as a new means to stay in touch with clients and markets, on an immediate "now" basis. They allow companies to engage and influence clients with added value. Social media are about insight, about sharing the experience. They are also about relationships, internally and externally—those known and those that begin as a faceless connection. They are about communication.
To both Gen Xers and Gen Yers, social media are a given, both in their social environment and more and more in their work environment. Gen Xers, riding the coattails of the information revolution, saw the inception of MTV, home computers, videos games, and the Internet. Gen Yers came of age during the digital revolution and are sometimes known as the "net generation" or "first digitals." Whereas Gen Xers learned to use technology (Julie Bozzell was one of the early library researchers to become Microsoft® certified), Gen Yers just assume technology (when Christine Sellers' research position at her law firm was cut, she started a blog called Law Librarians of Leisure.)
Both generations have seen how social media have impacted the workplace and worry about control.
Julie: Social media are going to have a real impact on how we manage tomorrow's law firm, but we may not be there yet. Yes, some of these Web 2.0 resources can be good for getting your name out there, but time spent interacting with these mediums is not billable, which is not popular in the billable world we live in. Image control, however, is a concern worth some time investment by firms. LinkedIn, for example, does make the participants more accessible, and supposedly in control of their image. Recommendations by others on this site are seen as immediate approvals, which seem ideal, but they can also represent advertising, which is not OK in the case of lawyers. How many lawyers understand this? Firms should develop educational programming and policies regarding lawyer use and understanding of social media. When you use Twitter, you are sharing with strangers and not controlling your image. In short, you can lose control of your presence. There is no authority patrolling these social media sites for us and enforcing accuracy. It is up to us to stay informed and protect ourselves.
Christine: Law firm tweets give up to-the-minute coverage of timely client-centered matters. There is a difference between the business of law and the practice of law and social media fall into the mind-set of the business aspect. However with more people accessing sites, it is so important to represent yourself or the firm the best you can. If you do not take control of your presence, it will be created for you. The firm must take control of its involvement with social media or information will be missing or misunderstood.
As law firms initiate more and more social media formats, they are taking control of this technology, understanding that an online imprint can last for eternity. However, there are other concerns being discussed, most notably the scholarship and work product of young associates.
Born Book vs. Born Blog
That online media are more expedient and geographically convenient than print, and afford a more productive and efficient system for sharing and creating information, is understood. However, what is not so well recognized is that, although all online information can be converted to print, the opposite is not the case. Not all print information can be converted to alternative media, and so, for now, books and blogs remain side by side.
Both older and younger generations of researchers have their own style of obtaining information. One flips pages and the other clicks links. They share the end goal of obtaining the correct information or correct scholarship that will enable them to provide the best service to their client. However, they do not understand each other's tactics. Methodical, more print-oriented researchers are concerned about the younger generation's seemingly random research practices. And they are becoming vocal concerning the erosion of scholarship and its impact on the end work product.
Julie: I believe that social media are having an impact on the scholarship of the practice of law. Young associates used to go to their librarians for advice on which resources or research tools they should consult to explain or give precedent to the point of law that they were pursuing. As experts, we could direct them down the proper path, be it print or the use of a database. But now they go to colleagues for answers regarding research, or worse, seek out guidance from complete strangers on the Web. They do not always seem to understand the need for a qualitative source or the importance of precedent. Some attorneys consider Wikipedia a source, even though the authority is not apparent.
Christine: There is an erosion of scholarship, but there are other factors involved besides social media that are causing that erosion, like the cost of journals and treatises. Many law libraries are forced to cancel traditional resources due to subscription costs. Social media do have their purpose when impacting client development and updating or alerting attorneys. Firms should try to understand social media and what they can do for them. Complaining about them is not a positive.
In Conclusion
The constant of technology is change, and during the time it takes this article to be published, there most likely will be social media .2 and .3 in play. Further, the next generation, the Gen Zers or "digital natives," are growing up and making their way toward the workplace.
I did not reference character traits of the boomers but, as stated in the discussion of baby boomers in the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby _Boomer), "One of the unique features of Boomers was that they tended to think of themselves as a special generation, very different from those that had come before." Boomers, in effect, elevated generational demarcation to the status of an interpretative key to the human condition at work and in the larger society.
Does generational diversity, however, truly make that much of an impact in the 21st-century workforce? Boomers tend to think of the workplace as defined by their generation, but is it? Should it be?
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