After a business expert said that “old-style Boomer supervisors” are pushing out younger employees, a generational conflict broke out on social media.
Young workers hate being told what to do by their older superiors the most, according to corporate coach Kathy McKenzie, who spoke with Daily Mail Australia this week.
She continued by saying that the problem is made worse when Baby Boomers provide very explicit instructions to younger employees, especially women.
However, Boomers have retaliated against “lazy” Millennials, Gen Y, and Z, who have been complaining about their working conditions, by calling their generations “weak babies” who frequently produce “substandard” work.
The uproar on social media comes as thousands of disgruntled employees are quitting in droves, creating workforce shortages in some of Australia’s most important businesses, including the healthcare industry, where thousands of nurses have fled since the outbreak.
Similar job shortages have affected the rest of the world since Covid, and this phenomenon is known as the “Great Resignation.”
Dianne, 66, made the following statement as a raging internet debate over the subject erupted: “Youngsters are abandoning the workplace because they’d rather sit home on Centrelink payments than doing an actual job.”
I’ve had the opportunity to work with both young and senior managers. Actually, being a f***wit is a defect that affects people of all ages.
Regardless of their age, if your supervisor lacks this trait, you’ll have a horrible time at work.
It’s simpler to blame an entire generation for your problems than to accept responsibility for bad decisions. Additionally, it lacks substance and has no spine.
So are these weak, whiny babies who quit their jobs moving back in with mom and dad, another person asked? What are their means of support?
One day, this generation will be in power, said a third. Everybody will perish.
According to Robert, receiving direction from superiors is a typical aspect of any work.
He sarcastically tweeted, “How dare the baby boomer executives dictate to the workforce about how to do their job.”
Others have said that the complaints of the “me, myself, and I” generations are “a bit rich” coming from a set of people who go out of their way to be offended and then post “themselves crying on social media” about it.
We have raised a generation of selfish wimps, according to Janet.
According to one individual, millennials are’selfish, self-centered, don’t comprehend collaboration or responsibility to coworkers or company.
The issue is that they are also so conceited and entitled that they refuse to acknowledge or acknowledge any of these characteristics.
Another person commented, “Most young people wouldn’t genuinely know what pressure or hard work is.”
We have produced a generation of egotistical wimps, observed Janet.
Instability and excessive turnover are being caused by Australia’s vast cultural difference in many different industries.
Younger employees no longer have to put up with their bosses “making demands,” according to Ms. McKenzie, who launched the business coaching start-up Fire Up. Instead, they want to work for companies that can help them develop their talents.
When someone told you something you already knew in the 1980s or 1990s, you simply put up with it. That simply doesn’t fly these days. For younger ladies in particular,” she remarked.
When someone starts mansplaining, they are aware that they are no longer required to put up with it as they did ten or fifteen years ago.
Millennials and the new generation of workers now fully comprehend what coaching and mentoring are. Therefore, if their boomer employers lack that talent, they simply find it extremely frustrating and are likely to quit.
However, elder generations disagree and assert that perhaps the “generation of know-it-alls” would be happier at their jobs if they truly listened to their boomer bosses.
“That is what the younger generations do wrong,” I said. They choose what they want to do on their own, Christine wrote.
However, all of those other pointless chores must also be completed; that is why they were employed and paid.
Another person’s perspective on the generational struggle was more philosophical.
The writer stated, “Since time began, the younger generation has been putting the older generation down, until the young become the next mob of fools… Life moves fast.”
Following the Covid pandemic, Australia is currently experiencing a jobs crisis, with businesses all around the country experiencing a staffing shortage.
The 50-year low unemployment rate of 3.9% is mostly due to a major flight of people dissatisfied with their chosen professions and a sharp decline in immigration from abroad.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ most recent employment report made clear the extent of the problem worrying managers, showing 423,500 open positions.
The healthcare industry, where 20,000 “burned out” nurses quit their jobs every year, is one of the industries most severely impacted by a staffing shortage.
Amy Halvorsen, one of those who left, claimed there was a “big distance” between administration and the nurses on the floor.
The 33-year-old began working as a registered nurse in 2017 and was stationed in Sydney’s Westmead Hospital’s neurology and trauma unit during the Covid outbreak.
In 2021, she claimed, “It was so understaffed, and as the new waves of the virus kept coming, there was just no reprieve at all.”
There was no proactive preparation by the health department or the government to address it, so as soon as beds eventually started to empty out, we would be slapped with another wave.
“It got risky since we had patients on breathing machines who needed to be watched every ten minutes.”
There were few breaks, according to Ms. Halvorsen, and nurses had to rely on other employees to babysit their patients only to use the restroom.
She brought up the matter with hospital administration, who responded by saying “they are not seeing the same thing.”
They just see numbers and targets and percentages, not what health staff are going through,’ she said.
‘They were bringing in inexperienced nurses to look after brain surgery patients. It’s dangerous.
‘You’re frustrated, exhausted and overworked already, and then you are having to help train another nurse. The entire support system was falling apart.’
At one point, she was told to contact a counsellor as part of NSW Health’s ’employee assistance programs’.
‘Me calling a counsellor who has less mental health experience than me and has no medical background is not okay,’ Ms Halvorsen said.
‘They don’t understand. They say things like ‘do some deep breathing’. F**k your deep breathing.’
It’s a typical case of toxic management, according to Ms. McKenzie, who worked as a registered nurse decades earlier.
A good leader, she continued, “will be upfront about what’s happening and will give what information they do have, even if they don’t know something.”
‘Good leaders will also invest the necessary time in forging enduring bonds with their teams.
You must get to know your employees. What are the advantages? What are their core values and what sets them off?
With the ABS reporting that the number of people quitting their employment to pursue a business opportunity or to change jobs is now significantly larger than the number of persons getting fired or laid off, new data clearly shows that the Great Resignation phenomena is taking place in Australia.
The great job market shuffle is currently in progress, according to CommSec Chief Economist Craig James.
For the first time, more persons than those who lost their employment due to layoffs, business failures, or poor performance claim to be unemployed as a result of leaving their previous positions.
More work than in the past will be needed to recruit and keep employees, according to Craig James, chief economist at CommSec.
Employers who don’t provide improved wages and working conditions risk losing their employees, according to Mr. James.
Employers should be on the lookout and a little concerned, he said.
The job market is competitive, and there are a near record number of open positions that need to be filled.
It will take a lot more work than in the past to recruit and keep employees.