The Gen Z Firing Crisis: What we could learn as Professionals and People Managers

In recent months, a concerning trend has emerged in the media: an increasing number of Gen Z workers are getting fired shortly after being hired. Personally I have been raising a concerned flag for over a year now and my manager friends from across continents are confirming this from day-to-day experience.

Research shows that this issue stems from a combination of generational traits, workplace culture shifts, and misaligned expectations.

Whether we work with Gen Z at the moment or not, I strongly believe as professionals and people managers it's crucial to reflect on what we can learn from this situation to build environments that foster success for all generations. Additionally, Gen Z workers themselves need to consider strategies to thrive in the workplace.

A growing number of Gen Z hires getting fired

A recent survey reveals that over one in five Gen Z hires are let go within their first year. This trend is seen globally across various industries. A key factor behind these rapid dismissals is the mismatch between expectations and reality. As noted in a Forbes article, “Gen Z workers are entering the workforce with high hopes of flexibility, purpose, and immediate recognition. But when these needs are not met, frustration builds up quickly.” This dissatisfaction often leads to disengagement and quick exits, either voluntary or involuntary.

3 highlighted reasons why Gen Z workers are being fired, according to surveyed businesses

Amongst the several factors leading to early dismissal, respondents seem to align on these 3 most of the time:

1. Unrealistic expectations

Gen Z tends to enter the workforce with expectations that may not align with entry-level jobs. They want rapid feedback, career advancement, and flexible work environments. As these aren't always feasible, this tends to lead to upset and even potentially intentional poorer performance.

2. Emotional sensitivity and communication gaps

Gen Z workers are often more emotionally sensitive, which can lead to heightened responses to feedback. Euronews reports that this emotional sensitivity may cause misunderstandings in workplaces where thicker skin is expected. Dr. Travers Mark explains, “Gen Z workers are more likely to interpret criticism as a personal attack, rather than constructive feedback,” leading to productivity issues and early dismissals.

3. Lack of professional skills and work ethic

While being digital natives, many Gen Z workers struggle with other essential workplace skills like punctuality, time management, and communication. As Yahoo Finance summarises, “Young workers are leaving in droves due to their inability to adjust to company cultures, unrealistic expectations, and a lack of long-term commitment.”

A Millennial's view on the problem

I'd like to start with the caveat that, as a Millennial, when we entered the workforce there were also fear mongering articles and studies indicating that we were the hardest generation to work with till date and managers must revolutionise their ways of work to ensure they could manage us.

The challenges we posed were wanting a sense of purpose and working for an enterprise with a mission, interaction and to work in teams, demanding training and professional development, wanting feedback often, favouring digital technologies versus paper and printing of work files, and wanting flexibility in work to accommodate for personal life as well.

Looking back today, all these reasons don't seem that unreasonable anymore. Arguably, we can view this from a positive angle whereby Millennials brought transformative changes to the workplace by humanising work, creating a demand for learning and growth, and supporting digitisation.

Nonetheless, if enterprises and employees are struggling alike, it calls for reflection and finding ways to move forward.

Lessons for professionals and people managers from the Gen Z workforce experience

While these are not prescriptive, I would like to propose some considerations that may enable enterprises to thrive while employing the Gen Z workforce.

1. Provide clarity: Clear communication about the company’s culture, performance expectations, and growth opportunities during the hiring process can prevent the frustration that comes with unmet needs. While some employers might be used to high adaptability of previous staff to whatever comes with the job, this practice can increase morale and performance for all employees regardless of generation.

2. Use EQ: Managers should focus on emotional intelligence, providing feedback in a way that helps employees grow. It's important to recognise the emotional response to feedback and ensure that it’s seen as constructive, not personal. Easier said than done, but if your managers are Millennials, the good part is they'll be happy to learn more about EQ and effective practices of giving feedback.

3. Create development opportunities: Not so different from what Millennials expected, is it? Offering continuous learning, mentorship, and transparent career paths can help retain young employees. Ident. As Euronews states, "Gen Z wants to feel that their work is meaningful, and their contributions are acknowledged."

4. Consider communication styles: This is not to stay start using the cap - bop - rizz - salty type of Gen Z social media slang. But recognising that Gen Z communicates differently—often digitally—can help bridge generational gaps and improve integration into the team.

5. Have patience: At this point in time we're referring to Gen Z are junior professionals so managers must guide Gen Z through the early stages of their careers, providing support, clear expectations, and mentorship to ensure successful transitions.

6. Be understanding: I feel Gen Z is having a harder time navigating all the options available to them, making decisions all the time, filtering out informational noise and keeping themselves on track. The lifestyle they have access to bombards them with too much of everything. It might help to have some compassion and provide support and guidance when it comes to navigating work.

These demands on managers translate into demands on enterprises. To accommodate these intervention areas, the managers require training and development, HR support, and even possible new budget lines. Additionally, change management calls for a C-Suite that are open to suggestions from the middle management to innovate the workplace.

What Gen Z workers should consider to thrive

Staying true to my general belief that the individual is the first one to have to learn from an experience and adapt in order to thrive, instead of relying only on the environment changing according to its needs, Gen Z can also learn from this situation.

Some lessons I would highlight for them are around self work entailing formulating more realistic expectations about the role that work plays in their lives, and building emotional resilience and adaptability. Given the fast rate of evolution of technology and economy, the hard truth is that these 3 are essential from now on.

Since ancient philosophy and until today, all thinkers and those who created long lasting, high impact results (ie. Seneca, Plato, Edison, Jobs, Gates etc.) have vouched for delayed gratification, effort, accepting failure as a part of the process, and embracing a degree of discomfort and pain. Understanding that this is normal may reduce the pressure on Gen Z to create a "picture perfect" work life from their first job.

Additionally, a Learner-Seeker approach to life experiences can be much more beneficial than a Win/Lose approach. I call learner-seeker a person who demonstrates two characteristics: the discipline to learn from any situation, be that success or failure; and the courage to try new things with no guarantee for success for the purpose of learning from the experience and becoming better.

Conclusion

The rise in Gen Z workers being fired shortly after hiring reflects both generational differences, a rapidly evolving workplace and global economy, and a mismatch between workforce available and workplace set-up.

A collaborative effort from both employers and employees is essential to create an environment where everyone can thrive. Adaptability is, thus, required from all parties.

But it's not all doom and gloom. I see it more as discerning, learning and earning.