Young vs. Old Workers
I always believed that when you apply for that job position, you are expected to fulfill all the obligations that come with it. We often talk about students heading for their first full-time employment job after college, and the need for them to build experience, learn how to adapt to a real-time work environment, and handle different kinds of people.
For those fortunate to have done some work-study, you probably had a chance to work with good and bad co-workers, interact with polite and rude customers, and learning how to do your job at the same time. I always find it a plus to be able to learn that before getting that first full-time employment position.
To suggest that there is a divide between the young and old workers are based on pre-determined attitudes. It depends on the company you are working for. It is much different working in a construction company versus a financial services one. You cannot set this type of crtieria for all companies.
Starting out as a young worker, we are more flexible, tend to work longer hours, think somewhat faster, and bring in fresh new ideas. Older workers have lots of experience, they have gone through the mistakes, learned from them, and used them to work out better solutions. They're the ones you look to for advice. It is true that there are good and bad workers, and this can be applied to both young and old alike. We should take care to treat this as a case-by-case basis.
I also don't like the assumption that an older worker who is married and has a family tend to have less commitment to the company. I have seen fellow co-workers who have been married, or have kids, and they still do their 100% to finish that deadline, or to help out with an emergency production issue. It is only obvious if such a worker uses a lame excuse on a consistent basis and is not productive to the team and the company. You should not even use this assumption to start a family later or get married after 30.
Young and old...well I call them experienced workers is the best balanced group to have. I would even guess that having a bunch of young people working together may not be totally conducive. It gets too competitive and easily political. The team suffers and the work does not get finished.
Comments
Posted by: mimosa pudica
Posted on: November 2, 2007 01:03 PM
I just want to share my opinion to all readers. actually, young or old workers has their own advantages. I look foward into career perspective where, old worker has some experience and also has networking in way to develop their career. If the promotion based on seniory factor, it goes to old worker. On the other hand, for young worker, they actually can developed by an example metoring system, training and development, and also their own qualifiqation (especially for fresh graduate workers). By those coparison, we can see either old or young workers, it's both has an oppurtunity in way to develop their own career.