There could be people from four different generations working in your office: Multigenerational workplaces are becoming increasingly commonplace as people choose to work past retirement age, the University of Massachusetts writes in this blog post. There are at least four generations now in the workplace: baby boomers, Generation X, millennials and Generation Z. Each generation has different perspectives, experiences, values and goals, which can equally lead to conflict and innovation, depending on how well the company creates a cooperative environment.

The challenges of multigenerational workplaces… Communication: Maybe the biggest challenge faced is the different communication styles preferred by different generations. Younger folks prefer texts, abbreviations, and informal language while boomers might be more prone to more formal ways of communicating — preferences that can spell out serious communication breakdowns between parties. Leaders should be flexible to communicate in a matter each employee is more comfortable with, according to Dana Brownlee, founder of training and management consulting firm Professionalism Matters. Bringing staff members face-to-face for informal get-togethers and team-building sessions also helps break down barriers, she says.

Negative stereotypes: We’ve seen it happen before. Young generations are seen as lazy, entitled, overeager and tech-obsessed — while older folks are more stubborn, inflexible, and hard to train. It falls on management to actively look for dysfunction in the workplace and intervene if necessary. However, there’s also a big matter of company culture to be prioritized in this aspect as firms with a more competitive environment can push employees to focus on the negatives of their coworkers as opposed to seeing what they can learn from the other.

Expectations: Different generations expect different things from their employers. From work-life balance to a respect of mental health, younger generations may demand more from managers than their predecessors. For leaders and HR teams, a good way to approach this issue is to allow for flexibility in policies for each employee. Maybe an employee is more productive working from home or at night. Or another employee is looking for different benefits. It’s okay to customize employee’s work situations in a way that suits them as long as everyone feels the right to approach management with their individual demands, according to the University of Southern California.

However, it’s important not to put people in a box: While age can play a big role in how people interact in the workplace, there are other factors at play and often there are better predictors of behaviour. That’s the central thesis to What millennials want from work: How to maximize engagement in today's workforce. Young people want to make their name known while older people want their experience to be recognized and appreciated. However, at the end of the day, both sides want to be heard and respected. “The key to understanding someone's behavior is to look at the individual, and the best way to find out how to motivate and engage is to ask them what matters to them,” she told the Society for Human Resource Management.

Management should instead focus on the similarities all while respecting differences: Apollonia Poilâne has been running Paris-based family bakery Poilâne since she was 18, putting her in the position to observe both older and younger generations’ perspectives at the workplace. “Rather than focusing on the differences, I have been struck by the uniformity of feelings that people express, even though they may use different words and ways of speaking,” she told the Financial Times. She created an apprenticeship system where generations can pass on the knowledge to each other by allowing aspiring bakers to shadow more experienced bakers until they can become autonomous bakers and master the process. Apprenticeship forces a dialogue between different generations, paving the way for knowledge and perspectives to intertwine.