Generational Health and Safety: Five Generations, One Workplace

By Christine Umbrell

For the first time in history, the global workforce includes four generations —and in a few years, it will include five. With the aging of the Baby Boomers and the increasing incidence of older workers remaining in the workforce, OEHS professionals are faced with new challenges.

Generational issues become health and safety issues as the workplace becomes more diverse. OEHS professionals must understand the characteristics of all of the generations as they design training programs to ensure the well-being of a full spectrum of workers.

OEHS professionals “will need to educate, encourage and push employees so that everyone stays safe—within the context of a multigenerational workforce and a workforce that’s always in a hurry,” notes Joanne Sujansky, founder of KEYGroup and an expert on change in the workplace. “The workplace is rich with diversity; we need that diversity, but it makes it harder for managers to manage and leaders to lead, especially when we’re trying to make change happen.”

Embracing the Differences

OEHS professionals can contribute to a diverse yet safe work environment by first recognizing the disparate individuals who comprise the workplace. “A generation is a group of people with a shared experience,” explains Carla Rea DeFlorio, manager of chapter services for the American Society of Safety Engineers.

While it’s important not to overgeneralize a group of people by their birth date since factors such as culture, race and geographical background are equally important, each generation’s shared experience can help employers and OEHS professionals understand the needs of the varying groups. According to Robert Wendover, managing director of the Center for Generational Studies, “Pervading beliefs of different generations have a profound influence on the workforce. Their histories help determine a core set of beliefs that influence work and personal life.”

Most generational experts agree there are four distinct generations of working age today:
Traditionalists, also known as Matures or Pre-Boomers. This generation, born before 1945, grew up in a time of depression and war. They are generally considered to be hard workers who believe in paying their dues. “The Traditionalists experienced many things that caused them to be cautious and respectful of authority,” says Sujansky. Traditionalists are continuing to have a major impact on the workplace because “people don’t really retire anymore,” explains Sujansky. If they don’t continue in their jobs, they often become consultants or go into business for themselves.

Baby Boomers. This generation, usually defined as those born between 1946 and 1964, grew up in a time of economic prosperity and were the first to be influenced by television. Boomers also created a dual workforce, contributing record numbers of educated women to the workplace. “Boomers embraced a more liberal agenda, creating privacy laws and discrimination laws,” says Wendover. OEHS professionals will be faced with new challenges as this large group ages because, as Sujansky notes, “Boomers won’t be retiring anytime soon.”

Generation X, also known as the Baby Busters. This generation, born between 1965 and the late 1970s, are often considered the “latchkey kids.” This group came of age in households with two working parents or divorced parents and was often forced to be independent and resourceful. They have vivid memories of an economic downturn and the Gulf War. A more skeptical generation, Gen Xers are sometimes criticized because they are less likely to follow rules and more likely to challenge authority. They value their time more than money and strive for a work/life balance. In addition, they tend to change jobs frequently. Says Wendover, “They don’t become as invested in a particular workplace,” resulting in the training and retraining of a greater number of employees.

Millennials, also known as Generation Y, the Echo Boom or Net-sters. The newest group to join the global workforce, Gen Y is comprised of individuals born in the late ‘70s or the ‘80s. (Some consider those born as late as 1994 to be Millennials.) Because they grew up with the Internet, the Millennials are a “techno-savvy” generation used to being entertained—and sometimes criticized for having short attention spans. These young workers will have a major impact since “we will soon have 20 to 40 million Millennials in the workforce,” says Wendover.

As OEHS professionals consider the different generations, they must remember that birth dates are only one slice of a person’s experience, and people within the varying age groups also have different levels of skill.

What’s more, there are some who believe that the four generations defined above are incomplete: A fifth generation, sandwiched between the Boomers and Gen Xers, should be added to the list, according to DeFlorio. This group, originally called the “Cuspers” in the now-defunct American Demographics Magazine, is the group of individuals born between 1960 and 1968 that represent an important and unique segment of the workforce. “This generation should not be lumped in with either the Boomers or the Gen Xers,” cautions DeFlorio. “If you don’t talk about the Cuspers, you lose a crucial factor of your workforce.” According to DeFlorio, Cuspers have things in common with all of the other generations of workers—they’re a generation who understand the work ethic as well as the importance of the work/life balance. “The Cuspers can help explain the older generations to the younger generations, and vice versa,” asserts DeFlorio.

Implications for the OEHS Professional

Today’s multigenerational workforce requires more attention to training and a focus on retaining employees who are tempted to job hop. Older workers need to continue their health and safety training, especially as they face new obstacles in the form of physical limitations. And with increased turnover among the younger generations, more and more education on workplace health and safety will be needed.

“If you constantly have to retrain employees on environmental and safety skills, particularly in manufacturing, there will be more accidents,” says DeFlorio, who notes it is particularly difficult to keep people in some of the most dangerous jobs. “The Busters and Net-sters are highly educated; they may be taking jobs in manufacturing, but not for long. And if they don’t think they’re in a job for the long haul, they may not be paying attention to training and safety issues to the extent that they should.”
“Incidents will go up if management does not recognize the importance of keeping the younger generation interested in their jobs and focus on retaining employees,” adds DeFlorio.

Recent statistics reiterate the importance of training for the youngest generation of workers. “Young workers have a disproportionate number of injuries, especially during their first year in the workforce,” says Carol Merry Stephenson, branch chief of the NIOSH Training Research and Evaluation Branch. “Older workers in their first year on a job are not hurt as frequently.”

And the youngest workers have the highest percentage of injuries overall: NIOSH estimates that each year, 200,000 14- to 17-year-olds suffer work-related injuries; 64,000 require treatment in hospital emergency rooms; and 70 die of work-related injuries, according to John Palassis of NIOSH’s Education and Information Division. “Young workers have more than double the mean worker injury rate.”
“The special characteristics of young workers can make them more susceptible to hazards,” adds Stephenson. “They sometimes have an illusion of invulnerability that makes them take risks at work. They want to do a good job and be seen as competent and responsible so sometimes won’t ask for help or seek additional instruction or clarification. Because of their inexperience, they may make bad judgments.” Notes Stephenson, “Power differential in the workplace can also create difficult situations for young workers: Supervisors or co-workers may be older teens or young adults but be viewed as a ‘peer’ by a young worker. The young worker may feel pressure to ‘conform’ when bosses or co-workers ask more of him or her than is appropriate because of a lack of physical or emotional maturity.”

OEHS professionals must pay special attention to training the youngest workers. “More than half of injured adolescents reported that they had not received any training in how to prevent the injuries they sustained,” notes Palassis.

The direct and indirect costs of occupational injuries to young workers amounts to $5 billion annually, according to Palassis and Stephenson. “Young workers are the lowest on the totem pole in the workplace, but it’s the role of the OEHS professional to let young workers know they are part of the health and safety team,” encourages Palassis.

Putting It All Together

In the midst of all of these generational issues, one of the most pressing questions for OEHS professionals becomes: How do you train 70-year-olds and 20-year-olds in the same class?
“Maybe you don’t,” answers DeFlorio. “You may need to teach the same message in two (or more) different learning environments.” She continues, “Adult learning principles probably need to be re-examined. You’ll have to look at what pumps up each group.”

“To retain employees of all generations, it is important to appeal to their desire to learn,” adds Sujansky. “Emphasize career growth, paid training and skill development.”

“You need lots of bells and whistles” for the younger generation, adds DeFlorio, who believes OEHS professionals should pay particular attention to the difference in attention span of the older versus younger workers, as well as the importance of time to younger workers.

The youngest workers are “used to being entertained with audiovisual media in interactive modes,” notes Stephenson, “They don’t do well with ‘talking head’ lectures.” Stephenson is involved in a NIOSH pilot program that is testing how best to teach teenagers about worker safety. “What we’re finding is they’re interested in hearing true stories about kids their own age—it’s very helpful in convincing them, ‘That could have been me.’”

According to Stephenson, OEHS professionals should learn to use interactive PowerPoint with embedded video. “Young people being trained in health and safety respond best to education based in activities such as role playing or blended learning: a combination of a live person mixed with participatory games or computer-based learning. We’ve also found that young people are retaining the information longer in participatory training than in training with just a talking head.” NIOSH is in the final stages of the pilot program and hopes to finalize a design for an interactive worker safety program it will offer to schools this fall. “OEHS professionals who work with young people may want to access it as well,” notes Stephenson.

Ensuring older workers receive proper health and safety training as their bodies age poses another challenge for OEHS professionals. “Older folks will need to be reminded of some things they might be less capable of as they age,” says Sujansky.

But how do you train older workers without insulting them? The Boomers are a more vain generation than previously seen in the workforce, much more concerned with youth than their parents, according to DeFlorio. “You’ll need to be very careful when you’re trying to tell them they’re aging,” she notes. “If you don’t go about it in the right way, they won’t support the training. And they’re the managers—the ones determining the training for all of the workers.”

It’s also important to remember the laws when designing training classes geared toward a specific generation. “An employer cannot deny any group of employees employment opportunities based on age,” explains Patricia Gibson of the Naval Education and Training Professional Development and Technology Center. “To offer training exclusively to younger employees and exclude an older group of employees is illegal.” Thus, if you decide to offer separate types of training to meet workers’ unique needs, you cannot require that certain individuals participate in one particular type of training—you’ll need to offer everyone the choice.

Some experts caution against making too much of generational differences. Of course, the training needs of the newest workers are important, but in certain circumstances the techniques geared toward the Gen Xers and Millennials can be effective for older workers as well—and vice versa.
For example, notes Sujansky, “Gen Yers respond best to training that solicits information from employees and incorporates that feedback into the training. This is paramount for Gen Y—but it also makes sense for the other generations as well.”

Ernie Huelke of SafetyWorx emphasizes the importance of increased safety training for all workers—not just for those who are aging. “The older worker may not be as physically capable of the ‘brute’ type work that a younger person is capable of, but using brute force has only one distinction between the ages and that is when the injury will be felt—usually pretty quickly in the older worker as compared to the later onset of a musculoskeletal disorder in the younger worker.”

Huelke believes generational differences should be minimized rather than emphasized by OEHS professionals. According to Huelke, “Technological changes over the past 20 years have had a serious impact on the workforce, but you need to recognize the way those changes have affected all of the generations.” OEHS professionals should “concentrate on the best methods, procedures or practices for accomplishing whatever task/duty the employee is required to perform, followed by the correct placement of employees for tasks,” says Huelke.

Wearing Several Hats

The role of the OEHS professional is more important than ever as we strive for a safe and healthy workplace with such a diverse community. “OEHS professionals need to be the voice of a diverse workforce,” Sujansky explains. “They need to be able to flex and multitask as never before. They need to be good at coaching, be consultative and be persuasive and encouraging.” She adds, “It’s not an easy job, and one that’s probably undervalued.”

“OEHS professionals will have to become masters of diplomacy; they’ll need to be conduits of communication,” agrees DeFlorio. “They will need to improve their communication skills to communicate effectively with all of the generations. They’ll need to be able to tell the same message in several different ways.”

“The OEHS professional must act as a ‘change agent’ to lead the way as a facilitator for understanding (and appreciating) the differences in employees of different ages, levels of experience and education, ethnicities, cultures, sexes and backgrounds,” adds Huelke. “We get drawn into an ever-widening range of activities that were never (or rarely) discussed during our formal educations, advanced degree work or professional organizational get-togethers. We’ll need to be open to the need to change and adapt our perceptions as the workplace/workforce dictates, while still maintaining our professional charter of ethical practice.”

As Americans continue to age gracefully and live longer and more productive lives, the workforce is sure to become even more diverse. “We’ll probably go to seven or eight generations in a workplace,” notes DeFlorio. And as the workforce becomes ever more diverse, OEHS professionals will need to continue to adapt their skills to ensure a safe and healthy environment for increasingly disparate workers.