Published Sep 30, 2026 · 11 min read · Multigenerational Workforce
Two people on your team don’t get along. Both of them have already come to you to tell their side.
The older one says the younger one doesn’t listen. He says she cuts corners and ignores his twenty years of experience. The younger one says the older one blocks every idea. She says he explains things she already knows, and he gets upset when she asks a question. Neither of them said the word “generation” out loud. Both of them were thinking it.
So you do what most managers do. You wait. You hope the deadline will make them sort it out. Maybe you tell HR it could be an age thing, and someone suggests a workshop on the four generations.
Six weeks later, they have stopped talking. The work has slowed down. Two other people on the team have picked sides.
Researchers have studied this a lot. What they found may surprise you.
TL;DR
Researchers looked at 19,961 workers. People of different ages were almost the same in how happy they were at work, how loyal they were and how likely they were to quit (Costanza et al., 2012). The real danger comes later. When workers start to believe that age decides how they get treated, they care less about their jobs, and the whole company does worse (Kunze et al., 2011). So fix the way work gets decided. Don’t try to fix the generations.
In This Article
- What is really causing the fight between your older and younger employees?
- Why does “let them sort it out” make it worse?
- Where the real cost shows up
- How do you tell an age problem from a process problem?
- The five-step playbook
- What do you actually say in the room?
- Why does working together beat a generations workshop?
- What changes when you manage this in Singapore or Asia?
- How to tell whether it worked
- What to take away
- Frequently asked questions
What is really causing the fight between your older and younger employees?
It is almost never their values. Researchers put together 20 studies that covered 19,961 people. They compared the generations 18 times. They checked how happy people were at work, how loyal they felt and how likely they were to leave. They found no real difference between the generations (Costanza, Badger, Fraser, Severt and Gade, Journal of Business and Psychology, 2012).
Some of the same researchers looked again in 2021. They said most studies that compare generations are badly built. Mostly, those studies just repeat stereotypes (Rudolph, Rauvola, Costanza and Zacher, 2021).
That tells you something useful. Your two people are having a normal work fight. Somebody skipped a step. Somebody made a call that wasn’t theirs to make. Somebody got told off in front of other people.
The fight lasts because of the label. The older worker decides, “This is what young people are like now.” From then on, every small annoyance proves him right. The younger worker decides, “He’s from another time.” From then on, every bit of advice feels like he’s talking down to her.
Now they are fighting about age, not about the work. And nobody can fix age. You can fix a missed handover. You can’t fix being 54.
You can stop them from blaming age. The sooner you step in, the easier it is.
Why does “let them sort it out” make it worse?
Many managers think a bit of fighting makes the work better. Researchers checked, and it doesn’t.
Two researchers looked at many studies of teams. Teams did worse when people fought about each other. Teams also did worse when people fought about the task itself. That second one surprises managers, because many management books say task fights are healthy (De Dreu and Weingart, 2003).
The same study found the harm was biggest on hard, messy work. That means projects, big decisions and anything with lots of moving parts. Simple, repeat work suffered the least.
Now think about your two people. They are probably on a project. It has lots of moving parts. They have to make choices together. That is exactly the kind of work where fighting does the most harm. It is also exactly where managers step back and call it “healthy debate.”
Waiting is a choice too. It just feels nicer to call it patience.
Where the real cost shows up
One fight between two people costs you very little. The trouble is what grows around it.
Researchers asked 8,651 workers in 128 companies about their jobs. Here is what they found:
- Companies with a wide mix of ages were more likely to have workers who felt treated unfairly because of their age.
- Workers who felt this way cared less about their company.
- When workers cared less, the whole company did worse.
(Kunze, Boehm and Bruch, Journal of Organizational Behavior, 2011)
Look at the order. Having young and old workers together is fine. The trouble starts when managers let people believe that your age decides how you get treated. That belief spreads. Soon it reaches people who were never part of the first fight.
SHRM, the big HR group in the US, tracks rude behaviour at work. In late 2025, US workers said each rude act cost them about 35 minutes of work. They counted about 70.6 million rude acts a day. SHRM worked out that this costs about $2.14 billion a day in lost work and missed days. SHRM lists “age or generational differences” as one of the common causes, along with fights about politics (SHRM Civility Index, Q3 2025).
So look at your two people as a warning sign for the whole team. Most of the time, that is what they are.
How do you tell an age problem from a process problem?
Ask yourself three questions before you talk to anyone. Take ten minutes on your own. Think about the last three times these two clashed.
One: did anyone ever write down who gets to decide? Most of the time, nobody knows. The older worker thinks the most senior person decides. The younger worker thinks the person doing the task decides. Both make sense from where they stand. If you can’t point to where it’s written, you don’t have an age problem. You forgot to decide who decides.
Two: can people see the reasons, or only the answer? People with lots of experience take shortcuts when they talk. Twenty years of learning comes out as “That won’t work.” It sounds like an order, not a reason. Newer people ask “Why not?” The older person hears a challenge. The younger person was only asking. Neither of them is being rude. They just never said their reasons out loud.
Three: are they trying to win the same game? Maybe you judge the older worker on keeping things steady. Maybe you judge the younger worker on moving fast. Then they are not really fighting each other. They are both doing what you asked, and you set them up to clash.
What if all three answers look fine and the problem is still there? Then you may be looking at real age discrimination. That is a job for HR, and it has its own rules. Be honest with yourself about which one you have. Most managers blame age too early. They call it discrimination too late.
The five-step playbook
Step 1: talk to each person alone first
Don’t start with both of them in the room. They will put on a show instead of telling you what happened. Meet each one alone first. Try to do both on the same day, so neither has time to practise their story with a friend.
Step 2: ask how they decided, not what they want
In each meeting, don’t ask what they want. Ask them to walk you through how they made the choice, one step at a time. You want the steps, not the final answer. Most of the time, you will hear two good reasons. Each person just had different facts. You will be the first person who has heard both.
Step 3: decide who decides
Before you bring them together, make the choice you should have made at the start. Who decides this? What exactly do they decide? By when? Write it in one sentence. Put it where both of them can see it. When nobody knows who decides, people fill the gap with stories about age. Your sentence fills the gap first.
Step 4: give them one goal to share
Give them one target that neither person can hit alone. Set a deadline that is close enough to matter. Skip the team-bonding games. Give them real work with a real score, where the only way to win is to work together.
Step 5: say out loud that age talk stops here
At the end, tell them both clearly: we don’t explain a co-worker’s behaviour by their age here. Say it once, calmly, to both of them. It isn’t a warning... it’s a line. Then live by it yourself. If you have ever joked “You know what the young ones are like” in a managers’ meeting, your team already knows you don’t mean it.
What do you actually say in the room?
Three lines do most of the work.
When you meet each person alone: “I want to understand the last handover from your side. Walk me through what you knew at each step and what you decided.” You don’t mention the other person. You don’t invite them to describe the other person either.
When you meet them together: “You two disagree about who decides on this project. That’s my fault, because I never made it clear. Here’s what I’ve decided. Then I want to hear where it won’t work.”
Take the blame for the gap first. It costs you nothing. It calms the room faster than any listening trick.
When somebody blames the other person’s age: “That might be true of their generation. I need to know if it’s true of him.” Keep it short. Don’t lecture. It makes them talk about what the person actually did. Say it every time, even when you agree with the person saying it.
Why does working together beat a generations workshop?
When people from two groups work together in the right way, they judge each other less. Researchers have strong proof of this. They have no such proof for a slide deck about four generations.
Two researchers looked at 515 studies. They found that when people from different groups spend time together, they judge each other less. It works even better when four things are true. People are equal on the task. They share a goal. They work together instead of against each other. And their leaders clearly back it (Pettigrew and Tropp, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2006).
Here is what those four things look like for a manager:
- Equal on the task. On this piece of work, the best facts win, not the most senior person. Say so before you start.
- A shared goal. One target that neither person can reach alone. That’s Step 4.
- Working together, not against each other. Check how you reward and promote people. Does it make experienced people and new people compete? Often it does.
- Leaders clearly back it. Watch what you say in meetings. That’s the whole job.
A generations workshop often does the opposite. People spend a morning learning a list of traits for each age group. They walk out with better words for the stereotype they already believed. If you’re thinking about a session for your team, start with something cheaper. Spend an hour finding out if you even have an age problem. I’m happy to have that talk with you. Message me on WhatsApp before anyone spends a training budget.
What changes when you manage this in Singapore or Asia?
Your team’s age range is getting wider because the law is changing. And here, people rarely fight in the open. They go quiet instead.
From 1 July 2026, Singapore’s minimum retirement age is 64. The re-employment age went up from 68 to 69. Employers must offer eligible workers a job from age 64 up to 69. The plan is to raise these to 65 and 70 by 2030. A team with a 22-year-old analyst and a 68-year-old expert is already normal in Singapore. The age gap will keep growing.
People here also act differently. In many Asian workplaces, rank and saving face matter a lot. A younger worker often won’t complain about someone senior, because it feels like accusing them. An older worker often can’t take being corrected in front of others, because it hurts respect he spent decades earning. So you won’t see a big argument. You will see people quietly doing less than they could. That is harder to spot. By the time you notice, it has cost you a lot more.
So change how you handle it. Do most of the work in private, one person at a time. Only go public to share the decision. Never go public to argue about who was right. I’ve also written about why generation programmes from the US often fail here and about how the age gap plays out in Asian workplaces.
How to tell whether it worked
Give it six to eight weeks. Then watch for four things. You don’t need a survey.
- They use names again. They talk about each other by name and by what the person did, not by age. This changes first, and it’s the best sign of the four.
- Questions come back. The younger worker starts asking questions again. Going quiet was the problem. Asking again means things are getting better.
- Arguments get shorter. Not fewer. Shorter. If an argument ends after one back-and-forth, people finally know who decides.
- The side-takers relax. The two co-workers who picked sides stop working around the problem. You’ll often see it when both names show up on the same email again.
If none of these change, go back to the three questions. Usually it’s question two. Usually the two people still can’t see each other’s reasons, because nobody gave them a way to share them.
What to take away
- Researchers found almost no difference between generations in how they feel about work. Your two people are having a normal fight with an age label stuck on it.
- The label does the damage. You can fix a missed handover. You can’t fix someone’s age.
- Stepping back and calling it “healthy debate” is still a choice. Fighting about people and fighting about tasks both hurt teams, and they hurt most on hard work.
- Check before you act. Who decides? Can they see each other’s reasons? Are they chasing the same goal?
- Having people work together on a shared goal has much better proof behind it than a workshop about generations.
Is your team about to get a wider mix of ages, and nobody has decided who decides? An hour now can save you months of lost work. You can book a talk with me here, or start with my books on Millennials and Gen Z at work.
Frequently asked questions
Is fighting between generations at work real, or is it a myth?
The fighting is real. Age is usually not the cause. Researchers looked at 19,961 workers and found no real difference between generations in how happy they were at work, how loyal they felt or how likely they were to quit (Costanza et al., 2012). What is real is what happens when workers start to believe age decides how they get treated. Then people care less about their jobs, and the team does worse.
What should I do if the older worker refuses to work with the younger one?
Treat the refusal as its own problem, separate from the first fight. Handle it like any other performance problem. Working with the people you’re given is part of the job. Say exactly what he did and how it hurts the work. Agree on one change you can both see. Set a date to check in. If he refuses because of her age and not her work, this is no longer just a fight. It may be discrimination, and HR needs to handle it.
Should HR run a workshop about generations to fix this?
Usually not as the first step. Workshops that teach a list of traits for each age group can give people better words for the stereotypes they already believe. Research backs a different fix. Put people on equal footing for the task, give them a shared goal, make them work together instead of competing, and have leaders clearly back it (Pettigrew and Tropp, 2006). Find the real cause first. Then decide if training is worth paying for.
How long does it take to fix a fight between older and younger workers?
The talks take about a week. The mood on the team takes six to eight weeks to change. First, people start using names instead of age labels. Then the questions come back. Then arguments get shorter. If nothing has changed after two months, people probably still don’t know who decides.
What if it really is age discrimination and not a misunderstanding?
Then stop trying to help them make peace, and start writing things down. When one person has more power than the other, trying to make peace can make things worse. It can also put the person who spoke up at risk. Age discrimination is a formal matter with its own process. In Singapore, the law also says employers must offer eligible workers a job from 64 up to 69. The three questions in this article help you spot the difference early.
About the author
Vivek Iyyani is a 4x published author and keynote speaker who has trained over 100 companies across Asia on managing multigenerational teams. His books on Gen Z and Millennials in the workplace have been featured across major media in Singapore and the APAC region. He helps leaders build the kind of workplaces where every generation wants to stay and grow.
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