A population may be segmented based on age or experience with the intent of identifying attitudes and preferences that cohort members have in common due to their shared life events. This process of segmentation presents a classification of the subjects into generations distinct from each other. Most organizations in India currently employ men and women belonging to the different generations, especially knowledge industry companies. Therefore it is important that in the event of co-existence of multiple generations at the workplace, the underlying differences between them are leveraged for greater business benefits. Also it is important that detrimental outcomes if any due to conflict of perceptions are strategically averted. Given a context where most diversity and inclusion studies in the Indian milieu have focused on gender and disability till date, this report presents the findings of an explorative study that attempts to unravel the generational diversity of the Indian workforce wherein each generation is characterized by values, attitudes, behavior and a culture of work unique to them.

A process of continual brainstorming discussions that involved over 250 corporate representatives helped classify the Indian workforce into five distinct generations, members of some of which were born as early as 1920 and some as late as 1990. The generations identified were 1) Veterans 2) Free-Gens 3) Gen X's 4) EGen's and 5) Gen Y's. As birth years of a group of individuals would in turn determine the socio, cultural, political, economic and technological climates in which they grew up in, the year windows were appropriately identified. As the primary intent of the research was to understand the career choices and work ethics specific to a given generation in order to provide directions to manage the latent differences better, the discussions were centered on identifying behavioral patterns and beliefs of every distinct cohort.

It was found that while veterans are a rarity in workplaces of today, the Free-Gens were characterized by greater responsibility and the Gen X had a good share of its women making progress. Popular opinion was that the E-Gens were relatively more hardworking than the other generations and the Gen Ys who grew up as the liberalization, privatization and globalization phenomena were transforming the country's corporate machinery, possessed the most liberal attitudes.

The findings of this research will provide significant pointers to the latent stereotypes associated with each of these generations and will provide insights into strategies to overcome the resulting friction due to misconceptions. Bridging these differences and managing the varied interests of each of the distinct generations can lead to better collaboration, increased knowledge sharing, greater innovation, improved productivity and an increased competitive advantage. In nutshell, if the art of appreciating generational diversity is mastered by every worker on India Inc.'s network, a store house of tacit knowledge possessed by the older generations can be captured that can enable the younger generations' quest for greater leadership capabilities.