Calling—No, Texting!—Gen Z

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By: Arianne Cohen

Why can’t everyone get along? It’s a question that comes whenever corporate leaders start talking about Gen Z. These younger employees have been around for years, and will account for a third of all workers by the end of 2030. And yet, the hand-wringing about them is only mounting.

The turmoil of Gen Z snuck up on the working world. The pandemic created pressing problems—a deadly virus, supply-chain woes—that distracted leaders from focusing on this new generation who were, well, quantifiably different than their predecessors. Quickly, managers found themselves rolling their eyes at Gen Z’s insistence on work-life balance and their free-flowing mental-health updates. For years, companies did little more than field complaints about them.

But Gen Zers are different, says Roberta Katz, a former senior research scholar at Stanford and co-author of Gen Z, Explained: The Art of Living in a Digital Age, a collaboration with a sociologist, a linguist, and a historian. She likes to remind people that this generation grew up entirely in the internet age. “Once you change the medium by which communication can occur, you change how humans operate in the world,” says Katz. She also found that the members of Gen Z, along with being very adaptable, demand accountability and emphasize making a difference—which can be tricky for companies trying to please stakeholders. And they question authority. “They’re dubious about hierarchy for the sake of hierarchy,” says Katz, in part because the digital landscape they know is largely flat.

Efforts to build bridges between the generations are underway. Recently, a handful of companies have experimented with mentoring—or more precisely, reverse mentoring, in which Gen-Z employees teach more experienced coworkers and share ideas with them. Topics explored include leveraging social media, attracting younger customer segments, improving retention rates among newer employees, and navigating remote work as a young employee. “There are so many opportunities for leaders to gain helpful perspective,” says engagement expert Mark Royal, senior client partner at Korn Ferry.

Other companies are working to infuse social mission into their projects. They’re training managers to connect work with that mission regularly and develop collaborations, across departments, to engage Gen Z. Many leaders have—grudgingly—recognized what parents of Gen Zers knew 15 years ago: Simply ordering a Gen Zer to do a task doesn’t work. At the very least, it’s necessary to explain why you’re asking.

Above all, experts say, leaders need to meet the members of this group halfway, recognizing that they entered the workforce during a brutal pandemic and now face an uncertain economy and tech world. Indeed, as much as older workers and corporate leaders fret about artificial intelligence, Gen Z will almost surely be the generation that has to deal with its consequences most, including the specter of widespread layoffs and loss of roles. Ultimately, many older workers concede that they admire this generation’s resiliency, which emerges from the same attitude and approaches that sometimes can cause friction. “Gen Z really does have a markedly different mindset and value system than previous generations,” says Katz.

Photo Credits: StudioU, bsd studio, AlexeyBlogoodf, M-Vector/Getty Images