When we talk about New Work, we usually talk about how we want to work today and in the future. I am just as interested in where we have come from. Because our ideas about work did not simply appear. They evolved at a particular point in time – shaped by economic and social conditions, by technology, by changing roles and by the opportunities people had. And that story did not begin with Gen Z.
The post-war generation entered a world defined by rebuilding, economic growth and a strong desire for security. Baby Boomers grew up in the world their parents had rebuilt and went on to shape it for decades. Gen X witnessed the arrival of computers and major social change. Gen Y came of age with the internet and globalisation and helped drive agility, New Work and new approaches to leadership. Today, Gen Z is entering a workplace built and transformed by all of them. And Gen Alpha is just beginning to take its place.
The workplace shapes generations. And generations shape the workplace.
That works both ways. Younger generations encounter structures, hierarchies and ideas about work that were established long before they arrived. Office culture, career paths and traditional ideas of leadership were not invented to annoy young people today. They developed under different circumstances – and often made perfect sense at the time. At the same time, older generations cannot expect the workplace to remain unchanged simply because it worked for them. The world around it has changed.
Technology and digitalisation have transformed the way we work. Globalisation has expanded our horizons. Gender roles and family models have changed. And society has become more democratic in many areas: more participation, more equality, less unquestioned authority – at home, in education and eventually at work. People who grow up that way bring different expectations into the workplace.
Generations reflect the times they grow up in. And those times have a seat at the meeting table.
This matters even more because up to five generations are now working alongside each other. Working lives are getting longer. Some Baby Boomers are still in the workforce while the oldest members of Gen Alpha are beginning apprenticeships and taking their first steps into working life. In between are Gen X, Gen Y and Gen Z.
Five generations would be interesting enough in a stable world. Our world is anything but stable. Technological and social change has accelerated enormously over the past few decades. The difference between the formative experiences of a Baby Boomer and a Gen Zer is therefore about much more than a few decades. In some respects, they grew up in entirely different worlds. And yet they are expected to lead, make decisions, communicate, resolve conflicts, navigate change – and somehow work as a team.
That is where the generational perspective becomes interesting to me. It can help us understand why some things feel completely normal to one person and questionable to another – and why expectations around work can differ so widely. Generations bring the world they grew up in into the workplace. And somehow, all of those experiences have to become one shared working world.
That is why I see generations as part of New Work. A generational perspective cannot tell us who an individual person is. Nor should it. But it can help us make sense of change, understand differences and see more clearly why work looks the way it does today – and why it will continue to change.
Looking at people in the context of their generation is hardly a new idea. As early as 1928, sociologist Karl Mannheim explored what actually connects the members of a generation. His central idea still resonates today: it is not only what happens in society that matters. It also matters when in our lives it happens.
War, economic growth, emancipation, globalisation, the internet, smartphones, a pandemic or AI affect us differently depending on the stage of life in which we experience them. A child watching their parents rebuild a life after the war grows up with different assumptions from someone whose teenage years are shaped by social media, climate change and a pandemic. Someone raised with clear authority structures and traditional gender roles enters working life with different experiences from someone who has been encouraged from childhood to have a say, ask questions and challenge decisions. And someone who experienced digitalisation as a fundamental transformation of working life will look at technology differently from someone who has never known a world without the internet.
That, for me, is the value of the generational hypothesis. People from the same generation are not all alike. But they grew up at a similar point in time. Culture, background and individual biography matter just as much. Still, the world we grow up in leaves its mark. And we bring those experiences to work.
Every generation starts from a different point. What one generation fought for, invented or considered revolutionary may already be completely normal to the next. Before looking at the five generations working together today, it is worth taking a brief look at the generation that came before them.
The post-war generation: security could not be taken for granted
The post-war generation was born into a world where many things were scarce: housing, food, money – and often fathers. The war was over, but its consequences were everywhere.
Then came reconstruction, the Wirtschaftswunder and growing prosperity. A car, a bigger home, a holiday – things that gradually became possible but were anything but a given. Work played a central role. It provided financial security and created opportunities for social mobility. Hard work, discipline and reliability mattered. Hierarchies were clear and roles well defined, both at work and at home.
This was a generation that built things – quite literally. And it left the Baby Boomers a workplace that was more prosperous, more secure and full of opportunities their parents had not had at the same age.
Before we take a closer look: Definitions and birth-year ranges vary between countries and studies. The ranges used here reflect a primarily German/European perspective and are intended as orientation rather than fixed categories.
Baby Boomers, born roughly between 1950 and 1964, entered a very different world from their parents. Prosperity was growing. The economy was booming, companies were expanding and workers were needed. Opportunities were opening up that had not existed for the previous generation.
And there was a powerful promise: Work hard and you can build a good life. A secure job. A family. A car. A home of your own. A university degree was not necessarily required. A vocational qualification and a solid job could also provide material security and upward mobility.
Work created stability. That shaped the relationship with employers too. Many Baby Boomers stayed with the same company for years or even decades. Loyalty could work both ways: contribute, work hard and be reliable, and in return you could expect security, development and a dependable income.
Hard work and loyalty paid off. From today's perspective, long tenure with one employer can look inflexible. For this generation, it could mean something quite different: reliability, belonging and success. Baby Boomers also entered a workplace with clear hierarchies and roles. Leaders made decisions, experience carried weight and career progression took time. Being physically present was simply part of working life.
But this generation did not leave the world unchanged either. Its youth and adulthood coincided with enormous social change: student movements, women's emancipation, changing family structures and a broader liberalisation of society. Authority was increasingly questioned, roles changed and lifestyles became more diverse.
Baby Boomers inherited a working world shaped by reconstruction and security. They experienced growing prosperity and upward mobility – and spent decades shaping organisations themselves.
Their experience was that work could create security, hard work could create prosperity, and loyalty could pay off.
Generation X, born roughly between 1965 and 1979, grew up in a world that had become more prosperous and secure. The generation before them had built the foundations. Gen X could build on them.
And the opportunities kept growing. Business became more international, the US had a strong cultural and economic influence, and global corporations became increasingly important. Wall Street, yuppies and later the dot-com boom captured an era in which career and individual success had enormous appeal.
Gen X learned that performance pays. That is subtly different from the work ethic of the Baby Boomers. For many Boomers, hard work, loyalty and long service belonged together. Gen X remained highly performance-oriented, but career became more individual. The next opportunity might well be with another company.
At the same time, faith in endless progress began to crack. Pollution, dying forests and nuclear power became major public issues. The environmental and anti-nuclear movements gained momentum, Green parties entered parliaments, and Chernobyl made the risks and limits of technological and economic progress painfully tangible.
Gen X experienced both: the promise of growth and the debate about its consequences. Then technology began transforming work itself. Gen X grew up largely analogue. Typewriters, landlines and fax machines belong to its experience just as much as PCs, email, the internet and eventually smartphones.
This generation knows both worlds. It did not simply encounter new technologies; it repeatedly had to adapt the way it worked. Communication became faster, organisations more connected and markets more global. English became increasingly important at work, and international collaboration more common. Society was changing too. Gender roles became less rigid, more women pursued their own careers, authority continued to be questioned and lifestyles became more diverse.
Gen X therefore entered a fairly traditional workplace of hierarchies, office presence and established career paths. But the world in which it built those careers became more global, more digital and faster.
Gen X pursued careers while the rules of the game were changing around them.
Generation Y, born roughly between 1980 and 1994, experienced a world opening up at remarkable speed. The Cold War ended, the Berlin Wall fell and Europe grew closer together. Borders became easier to cross, travel became more accessible and exchange programmes and semesters abroad took a new generation across Europe and far beyond.
The world became bigger – and it felt freer.
At the same time, another world was opening up online. Computers appeared in people's homes. AOL connected them to the internet, Google transformed access to knowledge and Amazon changed consumption. Email connected people across continents in seconds. Start-ups demonstrated that companies, business models and careers could look very different from what had come before.
Then the internet went mobile. Gen Y experienced the rise of the smartphone during adolescence and early adulthood. Communication, information and eventually work became less tied to a particular place. Many Millennials in Europe also grew up during a period of relative economic stability. Their parents' generation had built prosperity and could often give their children access to education, university, travel and international experiences. Their horizons expanded – geographically and personally. Many moved away from home to study or work. Marriage and parenthood happened later. The path into adulthood became less prescribed and left more room to explore.
Freedom became one of the defining experiences of this generation.
And with greater freedom came a stronger search for purpose. When basic financial security is less dominant and many paths are open, choosing a path that actually fits becomes more important. That applies to work as well. A job is no longer only a means of earning a living or building a career. Work should be interesting, offer opportunities to grow and, ideally, feel meaningful.
The open world also developed cracks. The attacks of September 11, 2001 changed perceptions of globalisation and security. The dot-com bubble burst, followed by the global financial crisis in 2008. The opportunities remained, but the assumption that openness and progress would automatically lead to a better future did not. Ideas about work continued to shift too. Flexibility and work-life integration became more important. Remote work, workations and digital nomadism reflected a growing desire to fit work around life rather than the other way around. Leadership was questioned, hierarchies became flatter and participation gained importance.
This was also the period in which New Work and agile ways of working gained wider influence. Self-organisation, collaboration and different approaches to leadership began finding their way into more and more organisations.
Gen Y did not invent all of this. But it experimented with many of these ideas, pushed them forward and brought them into the workplace.
Work should no longer only provide security or enable a career. It should fit the life you want to live – and ideally have a purpose.
Generation Z, born roughly between 1995 and 2009, has grown up with extraordinary possibilities – while also experiencing just how uncertain the world can be. Climate change, political and economic uncertainty, war in Europe are part of its formative experience.
At the same time, education, travel, different lifestyles and career options are more diverse than ever. Society has changed too. Gen Z has grown up with a more equal relationship between children and adults than previous generations. Children are more often included in decisions, their opinions are taken seriously and rules are explained. Authority is less likely to be accepted simply because of age or position. For Gen Z, being treated as an equal is not a new leadership concept. It is something many know from home.
Gen Z is also the first generation to grow up with smartphones, social media and permanent digital connectivity. Communication is immediate, knowledge is always available and feedback is constant. At the same time, other people's lives are permanently on display. The possibilities multiply – but so do comparison and the fear of missing out.
The pandemic adds another layer of uncertainty. For a large part of Gen Z, it arrived during school, vocational training, university or the first steps into working life. Learning, work and social contact moved online almost overnight.
This is the world Gen Z brings into organisations. They tend to voice their expectations confidently and question decisions. A title alone does not automatically create authority. Leaders are expected to provide direction and explain the reasoning behind their decisions.
And Gen Z has high expectations. They ask for feedback and development, flexibility and good leadership, meaningful work and conditions that fit their lives. Previous generations may well have wanted many of the same things. Gen Z says so. And expects them.
I explore this in more depth in my article “Generation Z in the Workplace” – including my thoughts on equality, feedback, belonging, flexibility and development.
That can be uncomfortable. But it also forces organisations to engage with expectations that are already part of today's working world. Gen Z wants a voice, wants to grow and wants to be seen as a whole person. And despite all the emphasis on individuality and flexibility, belonging matters too.
They are confident, they question and they make demands – bringing their own ideas about work into organisations.
Generation Alpha, born roughly between 2010 and 2024, is only just approaching the world of work. The oldest are beginning vocational training and taking their first jobs. We do not yet know how they will shape work. But we can already see the world that is shaping them.
Smartphones, social media, streaming and almost unlimited access to information have been part of life from childhood. And AI is now fundamentally changing how this generation accesses knowledge, learns and uses technology.
Gen Alpha is growing up with AI.
Voice assistants, chatbots and generative AI are not technological revolutions they will have to adapt to halfway through their careers. They are already becoming part of how they live and learn. That could make a fundamental difference. When information is always available and AI can support research, writing, translation, coding and creative work, the questions change: what do we need to know ourselves, how do we learn, and what does expertise actually mean?
It is far too early to say with confidence which values Gen Alpha will develop or what it will expect from work and leadership. But the world shaping this generation is already markedly different from that of the generations before it.
What Gen Alpha will contribute to the workplace remains an open question.
And that is precisely what makes this generation interesting right now: the first Alphas are entering a workplace shared by four other generations – bringing a technological frame of reference that none of them experienced in childhood.
I find the generational perspective particularly useful when different ideas of what is ‘normal’ meet in the workplace. Ideas about good leadership, office presence and loyalty can vary just as much as attitudes towards hierarchy, feedback or direct communication.
Career, success and the role work should play in our lives can mean very different things to different people. That can lead to misunderstandings and sometimes conflict – particularly when we assume that our own idea of normal is simply normal.
For me, the generational perspective is not a box to put people in. It is a lens.
One of several lenses I can use when looking at people, teams and organisations. It can help us understand different formative experiences and points of view, and it gives us an opportunity to shift perspective. Just as importantly, we need to be able to take that lens off again.
Not every conflict between a Baby Boomer and a Gen Zer has anything to do with their generation. Personality, role, biography, organisational culture and the situation itself matter just as much.In coaching, a generational lens can help people reflect on their own assumptions about leadership, career or success. In teams, it can help make sense of different expectations around collaboration. And in conflict, it can offer another way of looking at behaviour that might initially be perceived as disrespectful, disloyal or simply difficult.
I am deliberately being provocative at times.
Statements about generations can be deliberately pointed. They do not have to describe every single person in order to start a useful conversation about what has shaped us and what we expect from work today. The provocation gets us talking. And that is the point.
Five generations bring different experiences to work. They still have to work together.
No generation starts from scratch. Each enters a workplace shaped by those who came before. Baby Boomers had different formative experiences from Gen X. Gen Y experienced new freedoms and began rethinking work. Gen Z brings a different set of expectations. And Gen Alpha is now adding another formative world to the mix.
Today, all of these generations meet in organisations, bringing different ideas about good work, good leadership and good collaboration. That can create friction. It also brings different kinds of experience, knowledge and perspective into the same room.
For me, the aim is not for one generation to adapt to another. The workplace is changing anyway – technologically, socially and economically. The task is to shape that change together. Understanding where today's workplace came from helps us understand why it looks the way it does. And understanding the generations entering it helps us see why it will not stay that way.
The workplace shapes generations. And generations shape the workplace.
Right now, five of them are doing it at the same time.
