Remember my generation, Gen X? When we arrived at the office, during a recession, we were mocked in pop culture as disengaged “slackers,” flannel-wearing grunge-kids who lacked a work ethic. Funny, but looking around me now, I see Gen X as the go-getters of the corporate world.
Then it was the Millennials. They were said to be entitled and lacking initiative. But somehow despite the mythology, they also found their way.
And now the working world’s latest addition—Gen Z—is being similarly ridiculed as misfit youngsters who just don’t understand how to act at work. In turn, Gen Z—as portrayed in scores of TikTok videos—sees the corporate workplace as inauthentic at best.
If you’re a Gen Xer, you’ve seen this movie before, literally. The 1990s comedy Office Space portrayed a group of young workers commuting to a mind-numbing bland cubicle corporate office to be tortured by absurd management tactics. It was a parody, but what the traditional work market had to offer at the time did often seem wholly unappealing. We were in the post-’80s hangover—scarce jobs, vanishing corporate loyalty, and disappearing pensions. No one could see that the slackers would go on to invent the internet’s business use case, enabling previously unimaginable connectivity and productivity.
So what’s the story with Gen Z? Everywhere I look, they’re taking it on the chin: They’re being fired just months after being hired. They lack a work ethic. They don’t even show up on time for work. But as with Gen X, their behavior may have as much to do with how the work world is presenting itself to them as it is about who they are.
Gen Z now comprises nearly one-fifth of the workforce and will be one-third by the end of the decade, so we need to get this right.
Are the kids all wrong?
So what do we actually know about Gen Z? Born in the late 1990s through the early 2010s, Gen Z made ethics and work-life balance their top priorities.
Raised on a diet of four hours of social media a day, they are the first generation in a century to have lived through an isolating pandemic. Internships were unavailable. They now find themselves engaged in hybrid work, getting less time with mentors than previous generations. They’re disconnected: Half of them don’t even want a promotion and nearly 70% see management jobs as not worth the hassle, a Robert Walters survey finds.
Gen Z came of age as trust in political leaders and traditional media was eroding. So it’s hardly surprising that they arrived at work cynical and wary, and perhaps a bit uncertain as to how to engage. One colleague lamented to me that young staff are blurting things out in meetings that would be better kept private. I wasn’t surprised. They’ve never had a mentor to nudge them under the table.
As you can tell, my heart is warm to this crew. My kids are in this generation. But I’m also aware that the workplace is a two-way street. Gen Z has work to do to improve how it interacts with colleagues and learns from senior management. Clear expectations of mutual respect are necessary for a collaborative workplace.
But we also need to notice and encourage what Gen Z brings. Rather than ridicule a generation that’s turned off by middle management jobs, we should appreciate their desire for purpose, work-life balance, and fair pay. We can get curious and better understand how we can help them reach their potential.
Missing connections, building bridges
Gen Z needs to be managed differently, by leaders willing to place emphasis on communication, collaboration, and developing team members. Yes, Gen Z needs to learn these skills themselves, but we also know that these are traits they appreciate in others. They are relying on us to model these characteristics. Leaders who interact with them can reverse the trend: 69% of Gen Z and younger Millennials say they are either not engaged or are actively disengaged at work, Gallup reports.
In an era of automation and artificial intelligence, the most human of human qualities will need to be nurtured—critical thinking, effective partnering, and the magic of interpersonal connection.
Remember also that Gen Z is used to having an audience (albeit on social media), so they will benefit from opportunities to offer their ideas. Give them a chance to present and test their ideas on how to improve the workplace. It will yield two benefits: First, they will see how their ideas land and recalibrate when they receive constructive feedback given from a place of support. Second, these new entrants—the most tech-savvy generation yet—will almost certainly come up with some true innovation.
Note that frontline managers, currently a mix of generations, themselves may need training to effectively manage new workers who are nervous about economic uncertainty, inflation, and a complex business landscape.
Effective managers can offer flexibility within reasonable boundaries. We know that Gen Z values their lives outside work, which can show up as sticking tightly to work hours. So, if you sometimes need to call workers off-hours, explain why and what the employee will get in return, whether that’s flexibility another day, participating in an interesting project, or supporting a goal that impacts their compensation. In the hybrid office, managers must accept that mentoring and teaching is best done in-person, which means they will need to be present more frequently.
If we focus only on complaining about Gen Z, we’re not being effective leaders. I still remember my own early years, struggling after moving to a new sales role in Chicago. If I’m honest, I only succeeded when an older colleague provided mentoring and taught me how to better interact in the business world. Without his intervention, I might have manifested my Gen X stereotype. With his help, I succeeded.
In helping Gen Z succeed, we will become better leaders ourselves.
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
Read more:
- ‘Gen Z’ the label hurts young people at work—and ‘Gen Beta’ is even more doomed if nothing changes
- Managers are puzzled by Gen Zers as giving feedback becomes a lost art in the era of the ‘coddled mind’
- Gen Z are demanding more in the workplace. Here’s how we changed our culture for them to thrive
- Gen Zers walk into the workplace with one foot out the door—slandering them won’t solve the future-of-work conundrum
