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At work, hell is other people. You have to deal with each other’s little quirks. But we don’t all have the same threshold of tolerance for unpleasantness. Some people will get annoyed, for example, if they’re interrupted in a meeting, while others won’t pay attention. It’s a matter of sensitivities, but also of generations.
Employees do not go out of their way for the same reasons at work, depending on their age, according to a survey by the company Meeting Canary*, relayed by Fortune. For example, baby boomers are particularly offended by the paternalistic attitudes of their colleagues. 74% of them find this unbearable, compared to 63% of members of Generation Z.
Similarly, baby boomers cannot stand meetings that drag on unnecessarily (84%). Their patience is put to the test when they have to listen to their colleagues’ long monopolies (76%). Logorrhea that their younger siblings, the Zs, have less difficulty attending to.
But the generation gap is especially felt on the issue of professional jargon. The most experienced employees abhor “prez”, “benchmarking”, “business plan” and other technical words that are used at every turn in business. 70% of baby boomers find this corporate newspeak horrifying, compared to 44% of Generation Z representatives. This may be due to the fact that this professional dialect excludes the uninitiated, to the great detriment of team cohesion.
A strong attachment to respect
Because, in general, baby boomers are very attached to politeness at work. They look askance at any behavior that goes against the basic rules of etiquette. Thus, they harshly judge their colleagues who do not arrive at the office on time. Their younger brothers are much more lenient with regard to lack of punctuality. 40% of millennials have no trouble forgiving a delay of ten minutes, while 70% of baby boomers have a zero tolerance policy.
However, it would be wrong to say that there is a real generational divide between young people and seniors. Gen Z and baby boomers agree on many points when it comes to the most annoying behaviors at work. Regardless of their age, employees attach great importance to respect and civility. This is why you should try as hard as possible to mind your manners in the office.
Of course, no one is perfect and quarrels between employees are commonplace in companies. But managers must ensure that these tensions do not fester over time. A studyconducted in 2021 by the Observatory of the Cost of Conflicts at Work, states that daily confrontations at work cause the equivalent of one month’s work to be lost per year, which is equivalent to more than 152 billion euros in wage costs across France. It is therefore better to take a step back from the bad habits of your colleagues.
*This survey was conducted by Censuswide, on behalf of Meeting Canary, among 1,016 British office workers who participate, at least once a week, in videoconference or face-to-face meetings.