Our Story
n-gen was created to help organizations
get, keep and grow all four generations
Giselle Kovary and Adwoa K. Buahene, come from different social and cultural backgrounds. Giselle grew up in one of the most multicultural business cities in the world, whereas Adwoa was raised overseas and in small town Canada. We went to different universities, studied different subjects and had different career paths in the learning and development and performance consulting industry. What inspired us to found n-gen?
While working as colleagues, we began to explore the concept of high-potential employees and what organizations must do to develop and retain them. Over time, this discussion exploded into a number of related topics and caused us to pose several questions. Why does it seem impossible to retain high performers? Why is working on teams so frustrating sometimes? What causes teams to be dysfunctional and unproductive? Are these issues dependent on age and/or level of experience?
So we asked those questions to others, mainly our peers at first. It turned out, that not only did Giselle and Adwoa have similar expectations of our relationship with an employer, but we were motivated by the same values and possessed the same approach to work as did our peers. As Gen X cohort, we possess common values and characteristics. We continued our environmental scan and conducted interviews to determine whether or not other generations had the same expectations and motivations as Gen Xers did, specifically when they were in their mid 20’s – to late 30’s. It turned out, there were distinct differences between how Gen Xers view the world and the way Traditionalists and Baby Boomers view the world. And this remained true, even when we compared experiences at the same age and life stage.
First, the experienced generations behaved differently when they entered the workforce versus today’s Gen X & Gen Y employees. Second, each generation often has difficulty understanding the motivations and expectations of the other cohorts. Third, each generation possesses a core set of values and skills that are unique to that generation. Clashes occur when values, expectations and behaviors conflict.
We evaluated the marketplace and observed a significant gap – in 2003 no one was dealing with people performance from a generational perspective. Traditional performance consultants largely ignore the tremendous impact generational differences have on workplace performance. We created solutions that could be applied easily and quickly within organizations. n-gen was founded to help companies address gaps in organizational performance while improving engagement of your multigenerational workforce.
|
