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1 Aug 2023, by Kristen Gutierrez
In the ever-evolving landscape of business, one constant remains: the generational gap in the workplace. This gap, often overlooked, is a significant factor in organisational growth and development. Understanding and addressing it is invaluable for fostering a collaborative and productive work environment.
Who are Gen Z Workers?
Gen Z workers shall make a fourth of the workforce by 2025. This tech-savvy generation will streamline processes with software where possible, seek diversity and cultural alignment, and challenge inefficient management procedures. New ways of working have shifted as an emergent effect of their unique upbringing and encounters—the first generation to enter the workforce as digital natives and the vulnerable, less wide-eyed pandemic population.
Not anyone’s fault but simply a sign of the times, their problems were less about survival and more about self-fulfilment, until the recession hit. A collection of external events has since changed their outlook on work and self-growth.
Emotional Intelligence and Respect
The respect Gen Z workers feel when in conversation with management, through the ability to be trusted with flexibility and independence as efficient self-starters, is important to their progression within the company. To be able to pivot roles when facing skill development stagnancy or to be properly heard through cultural alignment governance meetings and anonymous surveys are underscored.
At the same time, Gen Z employees crave feedback. Their push for work-from-home arrangements has been wrongly connected to a dislike toward company communication. However, they are just like everyone else in their desire to belong to a community and be guided and validated for their work.
It is crucial that managers realise that their seniority of experience and expertise can coexist with the emotional intelligence they invest in understanding and empowering their younger team. Effective management of teams, young people included, is a worthwhile venture into unlocking bottom-up synergy for collaborative goal achievement.
Empathy for Change
Alongside millennials, the TikTok generation may be better educated when compared with previous generations at the same life stage, but this has not guaranteed them economic security.
The recession and rising interest rates have exacerbated this uncertainty, creating a phenomenon not unique in history. Less people tie their identities to work in periods of economic downturn. This is very likely to do with the fact that many employment situations during this time no longer become sources of great pride and self-identity.
This does not erase the fact that Deloitte’s study found that 61% of Gen Z workers already do consider work to be a significant part of their identity. The distinction lies in their stronger push to create meaningful, tangible change. They may not feel in control of today’s trying times, so they will likely make no bones about their controllable, immediate environment.
They care about poor treatment and unfair compensation not only toward workers within the organisation, but also toward the communities and environments they serve. This has taken shape through standing up for their needs and workload capacities, union action, and the stronger need for more town hall meetings to keep up to speed with employee satisfaction and corporate social responsibility. It is no longer enough to be profitable; it has to become about serving a larger purpose with tangible commitments to sustainable labour, values and culture, charity, and supply chain systems.
A Sobering Reality
It is widely acknowledged that work cannot solve the entirety of a complicated mixed bag of needs, but for the 38 hours or more each week that is put into it, young workers hope to find purpose in the hands of good management. They envision a technologically advanced, flexible, diverse, and inclusive workplace.
There is an argument to be made that they may outgrow their ideals and that ‘life will hit them’ eventually, but as it stands, management has significant power over the future of organisational compassion and the ability to impel career empowerment in an age of accelerated growth and automation.
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