Workplaces today are likely to have up to five generations of employees working together, as Traditionalists push back their retirement and Gen Zers start entering the labor force.
In fact, the Philippine Statistics Authority reported that of the 43.7 million Filipinos who are part of the workforce as of January 2019, 4.7 percent are 65 years old and above while 14.7 percent are 15-24 years old.
While generational diversity gives companies a wealth of perspectives, communicating across different age groups can be quite a challenge since each generation has its own set of habits and tendencies. To communicate effectively, it’s important for both bosses and employees to understand each generation’s unique communication style.
Traditionalists and Baby Boomers value face-to-face interactions. For these Traditionalists and Baby Boomers, getting a better grasp of a conversation involves taking note of non-verbal cues and body language. A Traditionalist or Baby Boomer colleague or client will ask to meet in person or call to clarify and get the accurate message right away—instead of making follow-throughs in an email chain. This is one of the reasons why they’ve embraced video calls since these have the benefits of both a face-to-face meeting and a phone call.
Gen X likes to keep it short. Gen X co-workers usually send shorter messages simply because they want to get straight to the point. It’s also important to note that this generation’s early memories of communication involved not only face-to-face interactions and phone calls, but also text messages with character limits. The pager which was popular in the 1980s and the first mobile phones of the late 1990s could only support a limited number of characters per text message—teaching users to be brief yet clear in crafting their messages.
Millennials hate phone calls. Millennials find phone calls invasive and disruptive. Many of them also perceive calls as time-consuming and impractical, especially if the information relayed needs to be recorded or written down for future reference. Millennials grew up offline. Now that they’re fully integrated into the workforce, they strive for work-life balance and crave for those times when they were unplugged from technology. Phone calls, which they find inefficient, simply don’t help them achieve this. So before calling a millennial teammate, ask yourself: Can I send this as message? If yes, then compose one instead.
Gen Z looks for the human touch. It’s expected that Gen Z workers who grew up in the age of faster WiFi and stable mobile data connections would prefer exchanges to be more high-tech. But it turns out that these digital natives would appreciate more human interactions at work. Gen Z colleagues won’t mind meeting their bosses and co-workers in person. But when face-to-face interactions are not possible, they prefer getting a video call so they can articulate their thoughts and ideas more effectively.
Viber, one of the leading messaging apps in the world, is a great communication tool for all generations at work. It supports all their communication styles with its trendy chat features like audio and video calls, instant voice and video messages, and expressive stickers as well as its built-in end-to-end encryption that enables every user to express themselves and connect with anyone from any generation in the most secure way possible.
