Monday, March 28, 2011

Generation What? The Baby Boomers .....

Having spoken about the Traditionalist Generation, we now move on to the Baby boomers and how they left and are leaving their mark in our lives.

Baby boomers 

Born: Between 1946 and 1964

Age: Between 47 to 65

Education: Seen as a birthright

Influencers: Civil Rights, Space Travel, the Vietnam War, the Sexual Revolution, and the Cold War/Russia.

Family:  Came from privileged backgrounds, due to their parents’ hard work and savings.  Long work hours and living to work resulted in an imbalance and the family unit disintegration with the highest divorce rate and 2nd marriages in history. 

Values:  Value success but also think of themselves as a special generation, due to their radical views and democratic outlook. They have a broad continuity of values with older and younger generations and have a tendency to define the world in terms of the generations. The Baby boomers are post War Babies who grew up to be the radicals of the 70’s and yuppies of the 80’s. 

Money: As a group in general, they are the healthiest, most educated and wealthiest generation of that time and grew up with an optimistic outlook for life, their futures and the world as a whole.

They strived for the American Dream, they are well established in their careers and hold positions of power and authority, and as a result they are seen as being greedy, materialistic and ambitious.

Motivation:  The strongest motivator for this group is being valued, prestige, perks and their need for money, they define themselves by their professional accomplishments.

Work: Baby boomers live to work, they are loyal to their careers and employer. They have a strong work ethic, are multi-taskers and traditionally found their worth in working long hours (they established the 60 hour work week). Working hard gave them the self-worth and fulfillment they required.

They established “flat” organizational structures, democracy, equal opportunity, and creating a more humane, warm and friendly workplace.

They were rebellious against convention and tradition due to their conservative parents , however they were also independent, confident and self-reliant with a competitive edge and goal orientation.

This hard work ethic led to this group being hesitant to take too much time off work for fear of losing their place in the corporate environment.

Now, the Baby boomers  strive for a work life balance with a leaning towards a healthy lifestyle and strong family bonds.  

Baby boomers defined a new form of working – living to work, they were / are scared that not working hard will result in failure, being successful is all important.  As expats, they may be a bit set in their ways and struggle to find their feet within structured work units.  They do however, have the knowledge required to complete tasks and will be of great benefit to the organization as a whole when dispatching experience and information into the workplace.  Although they are aiming for better work / life balance at this stage at life they are still achievers and are still looking at climbing the corporate ladder given the opportunity.

And more from history

1950 - Korean War

1954 - McCarthy HCUAA hearings begin

1955 - Salk Vaccine tested on the public

1955 - Rosa Parks refuses to move to the back of the bus in Montgomery, AL

1957 - First nuclear power plant

1957 - Congress passes the Civil Rights Act

1960 - Birth control pills introduced

1960 - Kennedy elected

1961 - Kennedy establishes Peace Corps

1962 - Cuban Missile Crisis

1962 - John Glenn circles the earth

1963 - Martin Luther King leads march on Washington,DC

1963 - President John Kennedy assassinated



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