Some managers just love to judge people by their generation. They may view Generation Y workers as gadget-dependent hipsters with an entitlement mentality, Generation X as desperate to get ahead and Baby Boomers as fretful folks worried about personal debt, job security and retirement planning.

These silly categorizations cloud our ability to evaluate each individual fairly. In my role as coach, I’m often advising managers to abandon broad classifications of their employees. Instead, I say, “Just focus on each person’s observable strengths and weaknesses.”

Recently, I worked with a supervisor at a financial services firm who had just read “The Trophy Kids Grow Up,” a book by Ron Alsop about young adults (whom Alsop labels “the millennial generation”). The supervisor told me the book helped her realize that to manage her younger employees (she has lots of them), she needs to stop trying to cultivate their loyalty since they’re incessant job-hoppers. Instead, she’s harnessing their tech-savvy skills and giving them more opportunities to do community outreach as part of their job.

Treating groups of employees as an undifferentiated mass of generational drones isn’t productive. In the above case, the supervisor stamped everyone who was born between 1980 and 2001 as essentially the same person with the same attitudes and same hot buttons. But I bet some of those twenty-somethings might welcome a chance to stick with the same employer for a decade, especially in this economy. So why assume they’re eager to job-hop?

Don’t assume your employees represent their generation. View them as unique individuals with distinct needs, aspirations and preferences.

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Tags: managing employees