The Generational Disruption.

Nick Gray
Aug 11
7 min read

There’s a shift and change happening inside your business right now that will disrupt things more than you might realise. That disruption will either be a positive or a negative for your business and the outcome is totally over to you. It’s not going to be found on the balance sheet or in the marketing calendar and it's not coming out in your data either. But if you’re paying attention or even ready to pay attention, you will already be able to feel it.

It's starting with the way your people think, changing the way they move, and ultimately in how they show up at work. This is not just personal. It’s generational.

A recent survey by BoF Careers offers a glimpse into this shift and according to the data it tell us these facts:

Employees aged 20–39 ranked work/life balance as their highest priority.
Employees aged 50+ placed the most value on leadership and alignment with core values.
Across all age groups, DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) and sustainability remained flat, hovering around 8–9% and 2–4%, respectively.

On the surface, the results suggest or even show there’s a growing generational divide. But even further beneath the numbers lies something much deeper, a change in the emotional architecture of the workplace. It's a recalibration of the human needs, expectations, and those unspoken tensions. At IGU Global, we view this as a shift in the nervous system of the brand or business. Something I wrote about in one of my earlier articles if you want to understand more.

Fundamentally though it talks about how if you don’t know how to read that system or even worse you ignore its signals, you are going to risk more than just disengagement. You risk losing the internal cohesion that makes everything else possible.

The Nervous System Beneath the Culture Deck

So if you didn't know before, every single business has a nervous system. It’s not the company values framed in the hallway, the strategy document reviewed each quarter or the KPI dashboard in your Monday morning meetings and one on ones.

The nervous system is really subtle. It’s the quiet moment between emotion and action and the difference between what someone feels and what they choose to do, or avoid doing. It’s that energy in the room you feel after a tense decision is made or that sigh after a “yes,” or the silence before a “no.” It’s those moments, and what happens in the unseen seconds, when culture is either reinforced or eroded.

When that system is strong, people move cleanly and with clarity, trust, and instinctive alignment. But when that system is under strain and when emotional signals are missed or misread we see everything slow, stiffen, or even start to fracture.

The generational data doesn’t tell us what people want, but what it does tell us is how these different age groups are processing emotional energy and how that energy is either being supported or denied by the systems around them.

Younger Employees Are Not Demanding Balance, They’re Begging for Safety

Ok so let’s start with this age group between 20–39 years old who now rank work/life balance as their top priority. I think sometimes we are guilty of dismissing this as a simple lifestyle trend or a post-COVID aftershock. But if we are, that would be a very costly mistake. These employees have grown up watching first hand all the fallout of burnout around them. They’ve seen what it looks like when ambition goes unchecked and humanity is deprioritised. They’re not at all anti-hard work. They are however anti-harm.

When they ask for balance, what they’re really asking for is this:

“Can I bring the best of myself here and still have something left for myself when I leave?”

We have to be really clear and understand this isn’t just about hours or flexibility. It’s a recalibration of what success looks like altogether. Younger employees aren’t asking for less, they’re just asking for better. They’re measuring life by energy, alignment, and emotional wellbeing, not just by titles, timelines, or job descriptions. For them, work is no longer the centre of gravity, it’s just one part of a more balanced, values-led life.

This nervous system unfortunately is still under strain. It's overstimulated and overloaded. Constantly processing the inputs from Slack messages to cultural pressure to economic volatility and when this system becomes overloaded, it either shuts down or often rebels. It's why we see these employees walk away quietly. Not because they’re lazy. Because their internal signal which is the one that says “I’m not safe here” has just been triggered one too many times.

If your brand or business does not have the emotional infrastructure to hold space for this kind of reality, you are going to leak talent, creativity, and culture faster than any retention strategy can plug the gaps.

Older Employees Aren’t Looking for a Title, They’re Looking for Meaning

Now, at the other end of the spectrum, we have employees aged 50+ who are seeking leadership opportunities and alignment with their core values.

What this means is they too are not driven by ambition in the traditional sense. For them it’s about legacy.

These are people who have often already played the game. They’ve worked the long hours, chased the promotions, and seen what happens when purpose gets lost in the process. As a result they now want something that resonates and reflects who they’ve become and not just what they can deliver.

For this generation, success is no longer just measured by how much they’ve achieved but more from whether any of it mattered. They’re shifting from achievement to alignment and from accumulation to contribution. What they’re looking for now is not another promotion, but the chance to shape something lasting. Something that's going to outlive their job title.

Their nervous system is no longer wired for speed or noise. It’s wired for coherence and what that means is the search for alignment between inner values and outer work. For clarity in mission and not just clarity in metrics.

The interesting thing here is that when they don’t feel that alignment, they often don’t fight it. Instead they just simply disengage. Often quietly and elegantly and sometimes permanently. So if your business doesn’t create meaningful space for their contribution beyond performance reviews or corporate mentorship programs, you’re not just losing wisdom but the connective tissue that holds your culture together.

DEI and Sustainability Are Not Dead. They’re Just Baseline

One of the most interesting findings in newly released data is that DEI and sustainability is still scoring evenly across all age groups and it's relatively low. At first glance, we might think it suggests a decline in interest. But let me tell you that’s not the case at all. It doesn’t mean people don’t care and if anything it's quite the opposite.

What it means is these values are now assumed. They’ve moved from the category of competitive advantage into something far more fundamental, a kind of ethical hygiene. They are no longer seen as differentiators but instead they are expected as a condition of entry.

Just so we are clear:

DEI refers to diversity, equity, and inclusion which is a commitment to building workplaces where people from different backgrounds feel safe, valued, and supported.
Sustainability refers to environmental and ethical responsibility, its the long-term choices a business makes to reduce harm and contribute to the future.

These used to be considered pretty progressive at one time. Now, they’re considered absolute basics of trust signals. This is what happens when a value shifts from performative to essential. Companies and Brands don’t earn trust by talking about it anymore, those days are long gone. You earn trust by embodying it, consistently, quietly, and without the need for all the fanfare and spectacle.

We have all been in or seen brands treat DEI or sustainability as marketing stories rather than operational essentials and if that's you then unfortunately you are already behind. Not in the headlines perhaps, but in the hearts of your people.

What All of This Means for the Nervous System of Your Business

Sometimes we have to really pull back from the numbers, something you’ve probably heard me say before. The reason it's so important is because it's only then that real insight emerges. In this case it's this.

Your brand or business is being emotionally rewired from the inside out.

These signals are being sent by different generations and through different emotional frequencies.

Younger employees are telling you the system is too loud.
Older employees are telling you the system lacks depth.
Everyone is waiting to see if leadership knows how to respond, or if it will simply double down on what’s worked before.

A healthy nervous system can and will process new input without panic. It can adjust, adapt, recalibrate, and most importantly still move with coherence. An unhealthy system however will normally do one of two things, either its freezes or it overreacts.

The question is not: “How do we retain people?”

The real question is: “Are we tuned in enough to notice what our people are already trying to tell us?”

It's really that simple, because if you don’t recognise it, they will find someone else who does.

So what to Do Next

Firstly it's important to know you don't need to reinvent your culture overnight. But it is an invitation to start listening more closely.

There are simple questions we can ask ourselves in leadership.

Where is my team overstimulated?
Where is my leadership underutilised?
Where are emotional signals being misread or ignored?
And what small, everyday moments are shaping our brand’s nervous system, without me even realising?

This is where the amazing work begins. It's not with a new policy or an all-hands on deck meeting but instead with presence and attunement. It sits with leaders who know how to feel before they act. Empathy first and then followed by compassion next. That means understanding first and then taking action next.

The competitive advantage isn't about optimising the fastest. We have to change this thinking and what everyone will have you believe. It's whether or not you know how to move with feeling.

Nick Gray

Founder, IGU Global