Talent Management and Generational Differences

The term Baby Boomers refers to the generation born after World War II, who experienced a rise in economic prosperity, which in turn made them optimistic, which heavily influenced their way of thinking, such as believing in lifetime employment with a company and loyalty to an employer. Generations are a popular topic in the media and daily press, and they are commonly used in consumer market segmentation or branding; nonetheless, academic studies have reported mixed results, and so researchers call for caution in this regard. A theoretical perspective that might explain the group dynamics emerging from diversity, including generational differences, is social identity theory. The prevalence of rather negative stereotypes associated with age is discriminatory against older workers and bears the risk of an unconscious or conscious age bias in Talent Management (TM), or more precisely in talent reviews, performance evaluations, and appraisals of talents.