If there’s one phrase guaranteed to get anyone in the office worked up, it’s “intergenerational tension”. These words conceal seething resentments, fears and plain old prejudice. It’s a timeless story – as long as humans fear age and irrelevance, we will also fear the young.
These professional fault lines are often hidden behind a wall of basic courtesy, terrible HR “inclusion and belonging” jargon and lofty words about bringing our whole selves to work. News last week, however, that two of the Big Four consultancy firms, PwC and Deloitte, believe graduate hires have weaker teamwork and communication skills than previous cohorts has thrust the debate back into the open.
PwC is asking experienced client-facing staff to become coaches for graduates. At Deloitte, new joiners will attend daunting-sounding sessions on “mental resilience, overcoming adversity and the importance of mindset”.
This is the latest in a long line of intergenerational workplace battles. In the early 2000s, boomers and Generation X workers, who had been expected to be “seen and not heard” as junior employees, moaned about “entitled millennials” brazenly asking for higher pay and promotion. (I confess: I moaned.) In fact, millennials did us a huge favour – we all learned how to be less passive at work.
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[ Covid graduates struggle with teamwork - Deloitte and PwCOpens in new window ]
Decades on, many of that rapidly ageing millennial cohort (the oldest were born in 1981) are grumbling about the Gen Z grads and their potentially client-scaring habit of oversharing about physical and mental health matters. These new employees, born from 1997 onwards, have largely grown up in the online era of instant connection and global reach. No wonder they can seem overfamiliar: they approach the world very differently.
Having entered the workplace during a pandemic, Gen Z may well feel aggrieved by the assumption that newcomers must subscribe to rules set in a previous professional era. We need to flip that narrative. Workplace norms inevitably shift to fit in with young people, not the other way round. Demographics are relentless: by 2025, Gen Z will make up 27 per cent of the workforce in OECD countries and rising. Retention is another reason. Gen Z staff will leave if they don’t feel valued.
Edelman, a consultancy that has researched young people’s attitudes and beliefs, sounds a note of caution about the Deloitte-PwC assumptions on Gen Z workplace skills. “Perhaps it’s that digital norms are fundamentally different from in-person norms,” says its global head of employee experience, Cydney Roach. “It has become normal to not contribute in a digital environment, since there are so many people on calls; again, this leads to a problem down the line where junior team members don’t speak up.”
To keep Gen Z on board, the rest of us will have to be more understanding. Have you ever seen a Gen Z person willingly talking on the phone at work? Of course not. Mostly, they live in a stream of messaging consciousness. Tech advances will change how we communicate at work and, while we can’t predict how that will turn out, we can be sure that the revolution will be led by those who were practically born online. Older staff should simply embrace it (then moan on WhatsApp to our age-appropriate colleagues).
Leaders who blunder now face the added threat of online notoriety. A clip of Andi Owen, chief executive of furniture brand MillerKnoll, went viral after she told staff to leave “pity city” when they complained about not receiving bonuses. That’s going to keep happening as Gen Z refuse to remain silent when they experience workplace injustice. Bosses, take note.
Just as millennials disrupted outdated hierarchies, Gen Z will ultimately make work better for everyone. Buckle up, though – it might take some getting used to. – The Financial Times
