Researchers downplay generational differences

If you've thought about the federal workforce at all in the past eight years, you know, as singer and songwriter Sam Cooke sang, "A change is gonna come."

As baby boomers reach retirement age, the federal government could lose up to 60 percent of its workforce during the next decade. To replace those employees, it will hire new -- and mostly younger -- workers who've grown up with technology and communicate in ways that often mystify their elders. As a result, Uncle Sam is facing an exodus and an influx of different generations who must learn how to speak each other's language.

As the government scrambles to figure out how to attract and retain the next crop of employees, some agencies and private recruiting companies have begun to develop research-based models combining science and anecdotal evidence that claim to explain the motives and personality characteristics of Generation Y, also known as millennials.

A few of those models suggest that 20-somethings don't have much in common with their older colleagues. But other research indicates that some of those value differences might not exist, and that reinforcing negative stereotypes only drives a wedge between generations, giving tomorrow's leaders a distorted view of public service. That philosophy, embraced in particular by two young Energy Department employees doing generational research, focuses on teaching members of the federal workforce that regardless of age, they're probably more alike than they realize.

"Overall, people want their leaders to be credible, trusted, listen well, farsighted and encouraging," says Jennifer J. Deal, an author and research scientist at the nonprofit Center for Creative Leadership. Deal surveyed 3,200 public and private sector employees on what they want in a job, an employer and life in general. She found that across generations, respondents listed the same top 10 values.

"People mostly want the same things," she says.