Based on the title of this piece, you might expect this to be a fairly negative article, putting down the youngest generation of employees. It isn’t, but it will take a couple of paragraphs for that to become apparent. Bear with us!
First, let’s start with the claim and yes, it’s hard to spin the claim made in the title of this article into a positive. Hiring managers around the country (including many Gen Z managers) agree – Generation Z employees are the most difficult to manage, with the most common complaints being that they don’t have great interpersonal skills and they’re notorious for showing up to work late. Not good, right?
When it comes to being relatively easy or hard to work with and manage, here’s how the generations shake out: Per today’s hiring managers, 9% listed Boomers as being the most challenging to work with, 13% said it was Gen X, 26% said Millennials, and 45% pointed the finger at Gen Z. Of course, given that Gen Z represents the largest segment of the working population now, it doesn’t matter if they’re relatively more difficult to work with or not, but it’s worth taking a closer look at why that is.
The reasons are legion, and quite a few of them aren’t actually Gen Z’s fault. This is not to downplay the importance of personal responsibility, but the fact of the matter is, a great many Gen Z employees came of age during the pandemic, which meant that they attended their final years of college, and even graduated remotely. That, in turn, means they missed out on a lot of formative experiences.
Additionally, with the pandemic raging, if they were able to get internships (and many weren’t), those were done via remote work as well, which again, robbed this generation of important formative experiences that would have better prepared them for the work environment.
There’s also the fact that younger workers are generally more challenging to manage than older, more seasoned ones, so Gen Z has that working against them as well.
The good news is that all of those things are self correcting. As Gen Z gets deeply embedded into the workplace and gains experience, many of these issues will simply go away on their own with no special action required.
In fact, there’s a strong argument to be made for the idea of not taking any special action in any case, and instead, bending with the new work paradigm the younger generation is bringing with them. Gen Z is, after all, the most highly educated, technologically sophisticated generation in our history. They’re incredibly capable and creative, and if you, as a manager or business owner, let them, they can and will utterly transform your business.
Remember, even if you’re not a huge fan of Gen Z, they didn’t hire on with you to break anything. They hired on with you for the same reasons all your other employees did. To learn. To grow. To gain experience, and to make a difference.
Give them space to make mistakes. Give them time to learn from them, and they’ll reward you in ways you can barely imagine, and while they’re learning, keep them motivated with some fun appreciation gifts!