Generations at work: Why the differences are smaller than we think

In my working life, I'm almost always the youngest. As a Management Associate at a large insurer, I work in teams where most others are over 50.

You might think that worlds collide there all the time. My impression is a different one: the differences we attribute to generations are often smaller in everyday work than expected. And research backs up this impression.

What research says about generations

In 2020, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in the US examined whether generations reliably differ in the workplace. Their conclusion: the evidence for such differences is thin, and generations as categories are a poor basis for HR decisions.

Rudolph and colleagues (2021) reach a similar conclusion in a scientific review. There is hardly any evidence for differences between generations. What we perceive as "typical Gen Z" or "typical boomer" often has more to do with age, stage of life and the individual person than with the year of birth.

That doesn't mean there is no friction in age-diverse teams. It only means that the explanation "that's just the other generation" usually falls short. And it stops people from talking about the actual problem.

What really makes the difference in my teams

When I look back at where things have grated for me, age was rarely the core. One example: I presented a strategic project to the executive board that would have changed existing processes. The reactions in the room were rather reserved.

It would have been easy to put that down to the age difference. In fact, the topic was political; it touched on responsibilities and long-established processes. Above all, I learned one thing from it: communication and stakeholder management are crucial. That applies to a 21-year-old just as much as to someone with thirty years of experience.

What, in my view, carries collaboration across age boundaries are quite different things:

• whether you know the goals and ground rules that apply in the room
• whether experience is shared rather than just assumed
• whether new ideas get a real chance before they are judged
• whether people know each other as people and not just as roles

Relationships keep people in the team

The last point is often underestimated. The Deloitte Gen Z and Millennial Survey 2026 provides a figure on this that I find remarkable: of the Gen Z respondents with a close friendship in their team, 48% want to stay with their employer for at least five years. Without such a friendship, it is 33%.

This is not a generational issue. That relationships matter at work is probably true for most of us, whatever year we were born. I know this well from sport. When I had to give up artistic gymnastics after nine years because of my knee, there was one thing I missed above all: the team, the regular contact with everyone. I always experienced gymnastics as a team sport.

Later, in the 3×1000 m relay, this feeling became even more tangible. In the changeover zone, emotions and pressure are passed on, but so is the joy of carrying something forward for the team. With this relay, we ran a Swiss U18 record. In age-diverse teams in the office, it's similar: you pass something on, and what matters is how well the handover works.

Young on the board: responsibility rather than a title

I see this particularly clearly in volunteering. On the board of the Central Swiss athletics federation, I am responsible for communications, sponsorship and projects. I approached the board myself, because after my sports career I wanted to give something back.

My experience from this: young people don't stay because of a title, but because of real responsibility. Many clubs and associations are looking for young people for their boards. Often it's not that young people aren't interested. It's that the role offers little room to shape things, there is no proper induction, or the meeting culture is not very inviting.

Here, too, it helps to look away from the generation and towards the specific situation: what does a new person experience in their first three meetings? Do they have a project of their own? Do they know whom they can ask?

Three questions for your next team meeting

If you want to improve collaboration between generations, you don't have to start with a workshop on generational profiles. Often a few honest questions are enough:

• Where did we last attribute a conflict to age, when it was actually about something else?
• What experience in the team is shared too little, and which new perspective is heard too little?
• How well do we know each other, away from our tasks?

The answers are usually more revealing than any division into age groups.

I talk about these questions in my talks "The youngest in the room" for companies and "Young on the board" for clubs and associations. If you are working on this topic in your team or board, feel free to write and tell me where things are going well for you and where they grate.