You can’t pin all workforce problems on Generation Z

I was just out of university and at the end of my first week at work when an old colleague impulsively took me aside in a pub. “You look like a nice guy,” said the tanned veteran, who may have been 32 at the time, “but you give the impression you’re studying journalism, not practicing it. “

He had a point, which I took to heart. But this exchange came back to me as I read the latest headlines about how worried today’s employers are about their new hires.

Deloitte and PwC have felt the need to give their youngest UK employees extra coaching after their years of confinement in Covid lockdown and restrictions have made them less adept at networking and speaking at meetings, the FT reported this month. gave information.

For those Gen Z members who entered the workforce after Covid-19 hit, “the pandemic turned their first jobs into video calls two years in a row”, suggests a new report from Oliver Wyman and The News Movement which paints a picture of a different group more interested in their side hustles than their day jobs.

We are witnessing one of the periodic horrors of the working world that its latest arrival will undermine the way work is done. This time, the concern has grown from a hunch that pandemic years have so disrupted normal university experiences to a Covid-damaged microgeneration landing in workplaces without normal social skills.

This fear is not supported by consistent surveys: recently conference board study found that job satisfaction of American workers has never been higher, while research by Oliver Wyman found that Gen Z workers were more likely to be thriving at work than their elders.

Still, it’s allaying many of the concerns employers have about bringing people back to the offices where their Gen X and millennial managers began their careers. “Career growth happens in teaching moments between team members,” Blackrock told its employees last week on why they should be in their offices at least four days a week.

Managers are right to debate how often their youngest employees should be at their desks as they try to strike a balance between flexibility and “teaching moments.” But they should also think about what they’re doing for Gen Z employees once they’re in the office — and how often they’re taking them out of it.

Melissa Swift, a partner at consultancy Mercer, sees Gen Z as “a cross between Covid and ChatGPT”. She says the pandemic left them “in the wild” as students and now artificial intelligence is taking over the tasks with which early-career professionals once learned their trades.

That said, she sees the unusual needs of this group clashing with the fact that their managers are so exhausted they have little time to train the next generation, or even to spend time with their workplaces. Also to pay attention like experience. In other words, you can’t pin it all on Gen Z.

Companies have spent billions of dollars to improve the customer experience, notes Tiffany Bova, Salesforce’s global growth evangelist, but have made no comparable effort to improve the employee experience. Instead, their productivity push has overloaded young employees while they still promote bosses into management roles with little training on skills such as coaching.

What, then, should Gen X and millennial managers do to improve Gen Z’s working lives?

Wayne Berson, chief executive of Accountants BDO USA, says his firm, like PwC and Deloitte, has reconsidered its approach to training. But it has also assigned mentors to all its recruits, and has talked to its leaders about how to create more brotherhood.

He says that could be anything from working teams in collaboration rooms to hosting happy hours or dinners. Swift is also an advocate of happy hours, and is encouraged by the restaurant clubs and sports leagues she sees forming young employees.

Staff entertainment budgets were cut during the pandemic, but there is a case to be made for subsidizing informal opportunities where colleagues can learn from each other in a less forced setting than a training course. Most of what I learned about my business, and the places I put it, I learned it not at my desk but over evenings, lunches and coffees with my colleagues.

Employers need to give managers and new arrivals time to do the same, understanding that time spent swapping stories and advice is not stolen from the work day, but is a valuable part of it.

Not everyone is as comfortable in pubs as I was in my twenties, so if happy hour sounds like a recipe for unhappiness then at least take your new staff out to lunch. And while you’re getting insight into your long career, take a moment to ask what insights they have for you.

andrew.edgecliffe-johnson@ft.com