Successfully Manage Baby Boomers to "Digital Natives" to Optimize a Healthy Work Environment

One goal of all nurses’ is to provide safe, high quality patient care in a supportive and collegial environment. One goal of all leaders is to create a healthy work environment to promote nurse satisfaction which facilitates better patient care. Today’s workforce spans four generations and presents a unique situation in that each generation has different strengths and challenges. In the current workplace Millennials have been labelled as lazy, hard to work with or know-it all’s. Baby Boomers have been labeled as not willing to learn new things and not using technology to be more productive. This brings stress and conflict into the workplace. To create a healthy work environment leaders must address the multi-generational workforce. This presentation will define each generation; Baby boomers, Generation X, Millennial and Generation Z or “Digital Natives” in detail. For each generation defining world events, unique characteristics and the best managerial style for each cohort will be covered. Strategies to optimize unit collaboration and teamwork will be provided. This includes understanding each generation and learning how to work together to achieve a healthy environment which has a positive influence on patient care. Preferred communication styles between the multi-generational workforce will be addressed including face to face, written workplace notices, email and text messaging. Meeting the learning needs of each cohort is a challenge and specific examples will be presented. These education examples include face to face, synchronous online (adobe connect, WebEx) and asynchronous online (Healthstream). These specific generational intervention recommendations for leaders will assist to meet every nurses’ goal of providing safe, high quality patient care. A secondary management outcome from implementing these strategies will also affect creative recruitment strategies, increase retention rates and contain turnover to manageable levels as a result of nurse satisfaction. These outcomes of safe quality care and nurse satisfaction are important and necessary to both multi-generational nurses and patient care.