Bridging the Generational Divide: Strategies for Managing Staff Ages 18 to 80

November 01, 2007

Americans are staying healthier and living longer, which means, among other things, it's no longer unheard-of to have teenagers and octogenarians in the same workplace.

While recognizing that generalizations are by their nature only sometimes true, whether about age groups or other entities, BTW decided to ask independent booksellers what it's like to have such a diversity of generations in their bookstores.

The book When Generations Collide: Who They Are, Why They Clash, How to Solve the Generational Puzzle at Work (Lynne C. Lancaster and David Stillman, Collins) provided information about age-group characteristics and potential intra-generational challenges, as did assorted articles and studies about generation-mixing in the workplace.

Ironically, one trend surged to the forefront: Everyone has a slightly different take on what ages fit with each generation-name, not to mention what each generation should be called. For the purposes of this article, Generation Y refers to people ages 18 to 26; Generation X, ages 27 to 43; Baby Boomer, ages 44 to 61; and Traditionalist, ages 62 to 82. Nomenclature and age-ranges don't make a difference to Andrea Avantaggio, co-owner of Maria's Bookshop in Durango, Colorado. The store's 14 employees do vary in age -- half are Generation X, with a quarter younger and a quarter older -- but she doesn't consider generation-related characteristics when she's working with her staff. "Our training is all about communication, clarity, and re-training," she said. "We don't cater specifically to age groups."

However, Avantaggio has noticed "all of the technical tools definitely come easier to the younger booksellers. Often, the older staff gets trained by our younger staff on searches -- they can find anything!"

Allison Hill, COO/president of Vroman's Bookstore, has observed the tech connection, too. "I'm interested in and up-to-date about technology, but my Gen Y staff is much savvier about technology," she said. "For me, it's like a foreign language. I'm fluent, but it's their native language."

At Vroman's, which has three locations in Pasadena, California (two bookstores plus a fine stationery store), the staff of 129 spans the generations. Hill estimates 23 percent are Generation X, including her and the entire senior management team; 70 percent are Generation Y, and constitute the majority of the floor staff; 4 percent are Baby Boomers; and 3 percent are Traditionalists, including company CEO and majority shareholder Joel Sheldon.

Hill noted that, because Gen Xers at Vroman's hold management positions including CFO, head book buyer, and IT manager, "you can see that they in many ways have the greatest impact on the direction the store is going. Yet the majority of the floor staff, the people who are 'driving' in that direction, is Gen Y."

Conversely, Hill said the bulk of Vroman's customers are Baby Boomers and Gen X, followed by Traditionalists -- Gen Y is the smallest customer demographic. "We've been investing in market research and implementing customer surveys to try to understand what this could mean for the future of Vroman's, and what we need to be doing to prepare for it," said Hill.

At Books & Books in Coral Gables, Florida, 75 employees' ages range from 80-something to 17. Mitchell Kaplan, the Baby Boomer owner of the bookstore (which has locations in Miami Beach and Bal Harbour, plus a soon-to-be store in the Cayman Islands), said there haven't been any generation-related conflicts at Books & Books stores. "If anything," he said, "the generations feed off one another in a positive way. It makes the older folks feel younger, and the younger employees tend to be very supportive of the older ones, helping them out with computers and that sort of thing. There's a lot of knowledge-trading that goes on."

For example, Kaplan said the younger staff shares their favorite music, "which is helpful in terms of knowing what we ought to be carrying." Similarly, the older book buyers ask younger staff for suggestions about what to order -- and younger booksellers turn to more experienced staff for handselling assistance.

"When a younger employee gets a question from a customer," Kaplan explained, "I watch them go to the older booksellers to ask, 'What do you think about this?' or 'What do you know about that?' It's extremely important."

Kaplan said Books & Books' training method encourages this give-and-take: "Our training is a buddy system -- a more experienced bookseller mentors one that is less so, no matter what their ages. We try to get the employees to work closely with one another and hash things out. And it's vital to have all kinds of diversity, including diversity of age."

Matt Miller, the general manager of Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver, Colorado, agrees that certain things have nothing to do with age or generation. "The basic values we try to operate on as a business have really been the same throughout the years," he said, "things like respect for people and their individuality, or trust in its many forms."

But context can play a role in how those values are received, and carried out, by employees. "I think sometimes how you interpret things might be different, based on some of the ideas behind generational differences," said Miller. "When we say 'we respect you,' what does that mean? It might mean something different for different ages."

Tattered Cover's approximately 200 employees (at three stores in the Denver area) are fairly evenly divided among the four generations, according to Miller, a Baby Boomer himself. He noted that for Generation Y staff communication with customers is an area that calls for additional training. "Many twenty-somethings are used to a more casual interaction with coworkers, and sometimes they expect to have that with customers," he explained.

Miller said he pondered whether it's a generational thing or a basic business thing, and decided that it may be a little of both. "Valuing how you treat your customers is a basic thing, but it might be different for someone who's 20 to think in those terms," he said. "Maybe it's not how they view the world, or maybe they feel they don't have to follow those rules."

Vroman's Hill said she, too, has seen a need for additional clarity during the younger generation's settling-in period. Most of her Gen X staff started working at 14 or 15, while many of her younger employees are in their first job at age 18 or 19.

Thus, she said, "We realized that before customer service, before handselling, it pays to teach younger staff how to work. Be clear about expectations. Be very direct."

Cecile Fehsenfeld, co-owner of Schuler Books and Music, which has five stores in Lansing and Grand Rapids, Michigan, has experienced similar challenges with the Gen Y portion of her 250 employees. She said 40 percent of her staff is under 25, 25 percent falls in the range of ages 40 to 78, and the rest is in between.

Fehsenfeld, who is a Baby Boomer, said, "We have a lot of kids for whom this is their very first job, and they need extra attention and guidance. They don't understand that you really mean what you say... they feel it's okay to do something a bit differently even when you don't want them to."

She added, "I don't mean this to be critical, but I even see some of the same traits in my kids that I work against in the store. And parents apparently have very little influence over it -- for example, kids thinking being on time is optional, or that flexibility means we'll be flexible with them, but they don't have to be with us. It's a bookstore, but retail still rears its ugly head and says you have to work Saturday night."

An interesting phenomenon, though, has been the feedback Fehsenfeld has gotten from staff who didn't work out well at the bookstore: "It's pretty frequent that we'll get a note from them a couple of years later, saying, 'I didn't know how good I had it there.' I basically chalk it up to inexperience. Later, when they get out into the real world, they realize a bookstore is a really cool place to work!"

Speaking of cool, tattoos and jewelry have been a topic of discussion at Tattered Cover in recent years. While the company permits employees to display bodily adornments on the sales floor and in the stores' three coffee shops, Miller said there were some initial reservations. "When the proliferation of tattoos and [body] jewelry was first happening," he said, "we did ask, 'Is this turning off our core customers, because of how people look when serving food?'"

Miller said store management ultimately decided to "go with the flow... it still may be a turnoff for some people, but we'd hope the quality of the service would overcome the visual effect."

When it comes to training, both new and ongoing, Vroman's Hill said she, too, goes with the flow by communicating differently with Gen Y employees. "They tend to be much more visual... a memo doesn't have the same effect on them that it does on the Gen X staff. We've started using a training video for the floor staff because they seem more interested in learning through watching, rather than reading (memos, anyway)."

At Schuler's, Fehsenfeld employs e-mail, a whiteboard, and memos as a way to accommodate different learning and communication styles.

Differences in approaches to planning ahead has made Tattered Cover question the effectiveness of what was once a standard interview question. Miller said he used to ask applicants, "Where do you see yourself in five years?" Now, he said, "Baby Boomers may think about that one way, but for 20-somethings, the reaction has been more, 'Are you kidding me? I don't know what I'll be doing three months from now.' So, why bother asking the question?"

While establishing a detailed life-map may be decreasing in popularity, a collaborative approach to work is definitely popular among younger booksellers. Hill of Vroman's said collaboration seems to be the preferred work-mode for her Gen Y staff, while Gen Xers at the stores are comfortable working independently.

"In my experience, it seems like Gen X likes project management -- having things that they're in charge of and can work on independently, delegating as necessary," said Hill. On the other hand, she noted, "My Gen Y staff thrives when projects are more collaborative. They get excited about large offsite book fairs, for example. They are inspired when they are given a goal and they get to work together to figure out how to meet that goal."

That's true at Tattered Cover, too. As Miller said, "It's probably true of most bookstores. We tend to collaborate a lot, and have done that for a long time -- even though it may not have been the norm 20 or 30 years ago. For our generation, and other people working on commission to make a buck, they never really had that collaborative environment."

But at a bookstore, he said, "It's really more of a collaborative effort to find the book -- to find the right book -- and work with other bookstores, too. Younger generations really feel comfortable in that team-focused, collaborative environment."

Kaplan of Books & Books concurred, noting, "Our staff, young and old, hang out with one another -- it's well-integrated." He said he thinks the unique nature of independent bookstores likely has something to do with this.

"Bookstores tend to attract people who are more iconoclastic," he explained. "I get the idea they'd be able to get along with different kinds of people a little bit better."

Fehsenfeld said she loves seeing that in action at her stores. "I see older booksellers going to younger ones saying, 'Tell me about these graphic novels, because I don't get it.' The younger booksellers go to the older staff to ask about the best translation of Anna Karenina, or the best dictionary, or their favorite Wendell Berry books."

She added, "It makes the younger employees feel really good when they start to have conversations like that. And being with older, more experienced booksellers is essential to making that happen."

In that vein, Gen Xer Hill noted that one of her greatest business teachers is her 67-year-old father who, in his work as a mentor for a multi-billion-dollar company, shares his experience with young MBAs.

She said, "He reminds me that the secret to staying young is to surround yourself with people who are younger than you are -- stay open to their ideas, learn from them, and, whenever possible, mentor them."

It's sound advice. After all, Hill said, "In so many ways, the Gen Y booksellers are the best hope for the future of bookselling." --Linda M. Castellitto

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