Beliefs, attitudes, values and engagement of generation X, Y employees

Don State Technical University (DSTU), Department of Educational Psychology and Organizational Psychology, Gagarin Square 1, 344010 Rostov–on–Don, Russian Federation

^* Corresponding author: dianadaver@gmail.com

Abstract

This study starts with employee opinion survey, which is a measurement tool of employee engagement and satisfaction. The result of the survey, performed among 1480 employees of international construction company, points at certain targets for improvement in well-being field. We strove to find a correlation within least contented employees, between such factors as their seniority status in the company, gender, age and their low satisfaction, thus we found out that generation X employees are more satisfied (9% more) and as a result more engaged in the company culture than Y employees. This article reveals the reasons of this difference in satisfaction level between employees of two generations. Our first hypothesis was that shift in value orientation caused inconsistency with corporate culture, but after having used method of values ranking (system of «Life Meanings» by V. Yu. Kotlyakov) for a group of 620 employees of both generations, we had to accept that our hypothesis was only partially true and value changes in two generations were not dramatic. Our second hypothesis stated that deeper changes in reality perception like beliefs and self-concept could lead to lower satisfaction of Y generation employees with their work. We supposed that these deeper changes include beliefs as the basic elements of any complicated construct. We applied method of collectivism and individualism orientation measuring by Pochebut L. G to the group of 248 respondents of both generations. The outcome of this study shows that generation X employees’ beliefs reflect collectivism orientation and beliefs of the generation Y employees reflect individualism in 50% of the sampling.