Study outlines two converging pressures on workplaces, GenAI adoption and multigenerational teams

A recent study has outlined two converging pressures on workplaces in Malta, rapid GenAI adoption, and multigenerational teams.

“Meeting both requires deliberate choices about norms, learning, strategic (re)skilling and governance,” the report states. The report was based on 8 focus groups with 64 participants between the ages of 18 and 65, spanning education, social partners, civil society, employers and youth organisations.

The research was conducted by the 3CL Foundation and the National Skills Council of Malta, offers an insight into how workers from different generations experience fast technological change. It provides valuable insight into issues which arise, perceptions, and provides recommendations on how issues could be tackled.

The report underlines that three insights emerged consistently.

Firstly, generational labels obscure more than they reveal. “Where differences exist, they tend to reflect individual attitude, role, and context rather than age itself.”

The second, is that "what shapes a person's relationship with technology is less about when they were born and more about when, and under what conditions, they first encountered significant technological change.”

And third, that transversal skills are the resilience anchor. “Adaptability, critical thinking, and communication were broadly identified as the capabilities most likely to hold their value as AI continues to reshape job roles and expectations,” it said.

The 3CL Foundation and National Skills Council of Malta study outlines a number of key takeaways.

The first takeaway is that while younger individuals were often described as being more digitally proficient, participants pushed back on the assumption that age explains this. It states that in their view the determining factor is openness and willingness to learn rather than age.

The second key takeaway, the report finds, is that communication is the most visible fault line. Here, the study found generational patterns for communication preferences. For instance, younger participants preferred instant messaging platforms, while older participants preferred verbal communication.

“Employers highlighted the value of formal communication strategies that specify which platforms should be used for different contact types (e.g., email for formal requests, instant messaging for quick queries, phone calls for urgent matters).” The report read that employers who implemented strategies reported fewer cases of miscommunication and fewer issues overlooked due to messages being sent through unexpected channels.

The third key takeaway was that learning preferences differ, “but psychological safety and relevance matter more than format.”

The report said that younger workers were described as opting for flexible, asynchronous online learning. But older colleagues preferred structured, in-person, guided instruction.

It also mentioned that participants warned against assuming younger workers are universally comfortable with all digital contexts. For instance, some noted “many young people panic at the idea of a virtual meeting.”

Meanwhile for older workers, a recurring explanation for lower engagement was fear of failure, the report notes.

The fourth key takeaway is that values and expectations are shifting. The study notes that the employment relationship is becoming more reciprocal and more conditional, shaped by financial realism, autonomy, and a stronger demand for credible organisational values.

It found that older generations were characterised as valuing loyalty, stability, duty, and security of tenure, while younger generations were described as prioritising personal fulfilment, autonomy, financial wellbeing, and ethical alignment, and as being more willing to move when those expectations are not met.

“Importantly, participants did not frame this as ‘disloyal’ or a ‘lack of commitment.’ They framed it as a different interpretation of what loyalty means when economic security feels less certain and organisational promises feel less durable.”

Among other things, the report also notes that in the youth focus groups, there was a strong undercurrent of pessimistic financial outlook. It notes that the idea of purchasing property is a source of significant anxiety across the youth focus groups.  

But it also notes that this anxiety has structural grounding beyond the housing market. It says that longer term shifts in the nature of employment across advanced economies, including in terms of contract stability, the trajectory of real wages, among other things, "altered the conditions under which long-term employment once operated as a reliable pathway to material security."

The fifth key takeaway, was that GenAI is seen as both a lever for productivity and a risk to human agency and early-career development. “Participants welcomed efficiency, but raised concerns about privacy, bias, passive over-reliance, displacement, and an ‘entry-level squeeze’ that could reduce junior opportunities for skill-building.”

The sixth takeaway, is that transversal skills, such as communication, teamwork, creativity, adaptability, problem solving, critical thinking, were consistently identified by participants as the primary factor for maintaining relevance in an increasingly AI-driven economy.

“There was broad consensus that empathy, creativity, and human ingenuity are distinguishing features of human work that resist automation,” the report read.

Participants explained how transversal skills are developed through formal and informal pathways, and many said that the right mindset matters rather than year of birth, the report notes.

Taken together, the six signals point to a consistent pattern. “The friction that shows up in multigenerational workplaces is rarely about age itself,” the report read, noting that it is about the gap between what different people assume is normal and what the organisation has actually made explicit.

“Communication channels, learning expectations, GenAI use, and what counts as professional behaviour are all areas where implicit assumptions diverge, and where the absence of clear norms produces avoidable misunderstanding.”

It found that where organisations have named the expectation, such as what communication channel is used for what purpose, what counts as acceptable GenAI use, who teaches whom and in what direction - friction is reduced.

The report issues a number of recommendations for companies to help tackle any issues. For instance, it proposes that companies make it normal and safe for all staff to learn new tools without fear of embarrassment or penalty, such as by creating a test account or practice task where mistakes don’t matter. The report also recommends creating a simple, reciprocal mechanism that avoids a one-directional younger teach older assumptions, by for instance setting up a  buddy-rotation pairing employees across generations for one month, among other things.

Cover photo: Kate Sade/Unsplash