Writing from the Coehlo Center, Shruti Rajkumar, a senior journalism student at Emerson College in Boston, finds that generation Z (the group born between 1997 and the early 2010s) has five priorities for their future jobs. Although I’m generally wary of qualitative research, my conversations with grandkids and that generation in my apartment and at the local fitness center resonate with her conclusions.
Flexibility: Although this group wants their fingers in their scheduling and organizing of their job, they also want to be able to access the support of other workers and managers. Job flexibility also includes both remote and on-site work, as well as some control over the hours they work.
What’s really intriguing about this Gen-Z priority is that I’m meeting plenty of adults, including Millennials (1981 – 1996, ages 26 – 41), Gen-X (1965 – 1980, ages 42 – 57) and Boomers II (1955 – 1964, ages 58 – 67), who want similar flexibilities. That’s a change from the past, but studies show it’s a Pandemic driven priority. My eldest daughter (age 59), a VP at a top non-profit, tells me that their firm is permanently remote. And she wants it that way. My middle daughter, a research manager at Harvard Med School, tells me that her job is hybrid. She controls the location and much prefers her own personal decision making on location. My youngest daughter has worked remotely since before the pandemic. Clearly this is changing throughout the entire work world.
But Rajkumar writes that Gen-Z is very intentional about flexibility. They expect it and many will quit their jobs if they don’t get it. The fact that employees now control most jobs rather than employers makes that a fait accompli. A 2022 Randstad Workmonitor global survey of 35,000 employees supports the conclusion. This is more true of all generations today than ever before.
Employers that match their stated values: Gen-Z is often drawn in by the language of their mission statement. This issue should put a number of firms into double-checking their mission and values. Having consulted with more than 50 major firms over the years, I’m aware that mission statements and values can be central to a firm or merely an outdated piece of public relations. One Gen-Zer, for example, found that a lot of firms bank on their history with no room for change.
Older managers may think that this is merely the idealism of youth, but whatever it is, Gen-Zers will not be bothered by having to pack their bags and move elsewhere. Furthermore, Gen-Zers who’ve just graduated from college will have a network of classmates to pass on both negative and positive reports on even major corporations.
The writer indicated that a 2021 survey by Deloitte revealed that personal ethics had influenced their selection of companies. Ernst and Young concluded that employers will need to demonstrate their values to these recent college grads. And that will include a lot more than shareholder values or making more money. (FYI: I hope the notion of stockholder values will get caught in the priority changes with employees. Milton Friedman’s impact has certainly not all been positive.)
Jobs with frequent changing responsibilities: This has been a significant value for the last two generations. But the still more enhanced and rapid changes in technology make frequent responsibility changes of still more importance to Gen-Zers. In typical fashion, graduating students will get negative information about a firm from former colleagues much faster than positive info. Bad is inevitably more powerful than good—and that includes corporate feedback. I still have a great deal of clarity from my elder grandson, a 25-year-old, who had reams of information on various companies. Not only from reading up on firms, but especially from an extensive network of friends and acquaintances. He could tick off the best places as well as the dirt from the poor places. So when one of the world’s top firms came knocking at his door, he had no difficulty leaving the previous top firm, even though he’d only been there 11 months. As an executive development coach, I had no difficulty confirming his move—nor did his executive parents--even though he didn’t bother asking for our insight.
Better firms invest regularly in their employees. Implicitly, that implies frequent changing responsibilities. “To satisfy the desire to work and learn at the same time, Lipson of Harvard says, some US companies have adopted apprenticeship models, proven effective in other countries, that let employees work and earn college credit at the same time. Deloitte is advising its business clients that employees of the future will need diverse skills — such as coding, effective communication, and creative problem-solving — so jobs should be set up to expose workers to multiple departments and duties.”
Diverse colleges and executives: Research reveals that Gen-Z is the most racially and ethnically diverse generation in American history. These demographics translate to the desire for many to work at places that are highly diverse and inclusive.
So, it’s no surprise that the push for diversity conversations around racial equality by some GenZ workers has created friction among some of older generations. Typically, friction is the most significant means of making these workplace changes. And Gen-Zers will not be slow about these demands. Even small and middle-sized corporations will have to be dealing with these issues—or they’ll be losing top smarts.
Drama free workplaces: More and more workers simply will not put up with toxic bosses or corporate drama. Twenty years ago, this would all be taken in stride. But not so today—and not even by workers of older generations. Rajkumar’s research from Rainmaker Thinking revealed that the most prized job quality is having “supportive leaders at the top followed by harmonious work relationships.”
It’s been fascinating to watch the evolution of this expectation over the past 25 years. I remember clearly the marketing VP who cam to me in the mid 1990’s and asked for my coaching, for fear of being let go if he didn’t change his ways. He was just in his late thirties, but his fortune 100 firm was changing the way it managed people—from hierarchical to flat hierarchy--and he didn’t know how to manage that way. He knew he had to treat his people differently and didn’t know how to do it. My interviews of his people revealed that they were willing to give him time to make the changes, but there was a limit to their patience. He successfully made the changes but it took him a couple years of hard work.
That was a typical issue in the ‘nineties, so it is inevitable that since the flat hierarchy is fully in place because of the impact of technology, the next generation (GenZ) would take the issue further. That’s exactly what’s happened—making even difficult bosses persona non-grata from the get-go. Today, a lot of hiring managers check-out relationship skills immediately and won’t go further with a potential who gives any evidence of toxicity. Stanford’s Bob Sutton put the issue of toxic bosses on employee radar with the No Asshole Rule in 2010 and then followed it up in 2017 with the Asshole Survival Guide in which he taught people how to avoid, outwit and disarm assholes. More and more firms today are dealing with the issue upfront. It’s a long, long way from the assembly lines of the 1940s and ‘50s.
GenZ often brings so much to the table in terms of their knowledge of the youth culture and their leading digital skills that major companies are out recruiting them long before leaving one firm and going to a better position crosses their mind. So, the employer is now being put on notice as much as--and sometimes more than the employee.
**Adapted from “5 ways Gen Z is insisting on changes to the workplace,” by Shruti Rajkumar,5/2022.