The majority of Gen Zers have little or no recollection of what office culture was like before the COVID-19 pandemic. With norms changing dramatically and remote work on the rise, they don’t have as many opportunities to socialize and get used to the environment. Social activism, political polarization, and hyper-transparency have shaped Gen Z attitudes amid broader assessments of culture and leadership.
Although Gen Z does not have a monolithic perspective, there is a growing expectation that work should have positive impact and meaning, and that the workplace adapts to individual needs, not the other way around. I am.
To respond effectively, employers must differentiate between Gen Z’s long-term expectations (such as taking greater responsibility for their environmental impact) and Gen Z’s unique adjustment difficulties (such as hypersensitivity to criticism). You need to be careful. Here’s what you can expect:
1. Gen Z is socially conscious and expects educational institutions to cater to their needs. Although Gen Z is inexperienced, we expect that leaders should and will respond enthusiastically to the ethical judgments and concerns they express.
This thirst for meaning brings into focus an employer’s core commercial and strategic decisions. For example, younger employees may expect the company to refuse to work for certain clients or customers on ethical grounds.
Company leaders must understand that they can never satisfy all the beliefs held by generations of employees without conflict. One of her sound ideas is to emphasize individual voice and participation in the democratic process. Rather than trying to impose our values or control speech, we encourage our employees to have private lives and engage with their communities. Of course, it’s okay to set some limits on employee behavior, but make sure these are made clear beforehand, rather than after the crisis has started.
2. If Gen Z employees broadly align with Millennials on social issues, we should expect significant generational tensions. Although young people are often characterized as progressive or “woke,” the reality is more complex. Broadly speaking, Gen Z still shows strong bipartisan alignment on issues like diversity, inclusion, and environmental responsibility, and supports greater government intervention in social services.
Younger millennials agree. Where alignment is most evident, both sides will be poised to bring generational tensions to the fore. Under corporate leadership that is disproportionately white and male, conflicts over power, opportunity, and inclusion are certain. Now is not the time for companies to pull back from their DEI programs, but rather to make them more authentic and less illegitimate. The point of diversity is to allow organizations to benefit from a broader range of perspectives and more accurately reflect both customers and employees.
Older employees may believe that introducing a more diverse workforce is likely to cause conflict and inefficiency. Younger employees may attack the willful blindness of employees who defend the status quo. What is needed is a focus on social identity and a nuanced understanding of the misunderstandings it can create among workers. Equipping your employees with the skills to negotiate and resolve conflicts will help channel their energy productively.
3. Gen Z is the first “digital native,” which increases the risks in the new dynamics of corporate transparency. Gen Z’s intuitive relationship with technology is impossible for older generations to fully understand. Her oldest Gen Zers were on social media by middle school. As the first members of Generation Z were becoming teenagers, the rise of a transparent environment began to undermine companies’ traditional reliance on confidentiality. More and more employees are divulging confidential information to the media in order to expose internal issues to broader commentary and judgment.
Employers must now assume that confidentiality provisions are no longer secure or reliable, while avoiding explicit promises to “radical transparency.” Numerous studies have shown that when employees have to do all their work in public, their performance and creativity suffer as their fear of failure becomes intertwined.
In fact, employers need to create structures that encourage Gen Z to learn, ask questions, and make mistakes outside of collective scrutiny. Just as true freedom of expression requires meaningful privacy, psychological safety is necessary to protect employees from falling prey to workplace “vocal culture.”
4. Gen Z suffers from high rates of anxiety and depression. Numerous studies show that anxiety, depression, and suicide among Gen Z are rapidly increasing, especially among women. The National Institute of Mental Health found that the prevalence of severe mental health problems among Generation Z is significantly higher than among older generations. 7.5% compared with 2.7% for people over 50. Experts say this increase is due to a cultural shift that cannot be ignored. This makes it easier to uncover such issues.
Gen Z has become accustomed to academic accommodations in the form of extra time for tests. Employers are having a hard time deciding how best to accommodate requests for more flexible working hours or unpaid leave, as the law allows for “reasonable” negotiations. There is.
Concerned about this unhealthy shift in the social contract between workers and employers, companies are demanding ever-greater insight into their workers, and by monitoring everything from their sleep to their hours online, they can actually do it. caused. More employers are taking health initiatives, and a recent Harvard Business Review article argues that managers need to be trained to provide cognitive behavioral therapy. While all of this is understandable, it can raise unsustainable expectations about employer responsibility. Again, give time off when needed, but it helps to be clear about role expectations, emphasize teamwork and responsibility, and combine empathy with clear performance expectations.
Gen Z’s fluid notions of power and distrust of organizations place its members on a full-on collision course with management. Fresh approaches are needed in team management, diversity and inclusion training, mental health provision, and political and social positioning, to name a few key areas. Healthy companies thrive on trust, cooperation, productivity, and morale.
Alison Taylor is a clinical associate professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business and executive director of Ethical Systems, whose research focuses on ethics and corporate responsibility. She is the author of Higher Ground: How Business Can Do the Right Thing in a Turbulent World (Harvard Business Review Press, 2024).
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