Is Gen Z Really THIS Bad At Work?
This screenshot below is from a WorkLife article where a bunch of mid-level HR people went out to a fancy dinner in New York and talked about “the future of work.” While relevant to some extent, I always find it comical when HR leaders are asked about “the future of work,” because most HR leaders are essentially drones. They do whatever the top dogs and the revenue guys/gals tell them to do. They are order-takers. So asking them about the future of work is a little bit off-base, but let’s still investigate.
That’s a damning quote re: Gen Z, and if you go anywhere on TikTok or YouTube, you will find similar videos and stitches regarding how seemingly awful Gen Z are as employees. I have not really worked with any Gen Z that directly, although I did have a newsletter editor job for a while that had a lot of Gen Z at it, and that was pretty bad.
If you were to go high-level on why Gen Z would be a bad work cohort, you’d probably come to:
Those would be the “broad brush” arguments. It obviously varies by individual and the work situation they find themselves in. Some workplaces would probably be very good for Gen Z, but yes, if you enter a Hammer of Hierarchy old-school workplace, and your university just let you skip classes because Orange Man Bad won an election, you might not end up being such a good fit in that job.
Also broad brush (and that needs to be a caveat to any generational discussion), but the few times I’ve worked with Gen Z, they are not substantive people — what’s that Logan Roy quote? — and they chase “vibes” and TikTok trends/memes over, like, actually getting work done. Again, my sample size is small.
As for the parenting argument/issue: yes, it's absolutely a problem.
This is a hard one to tackle because almost every older generation thinks their kids are parenting worse, or softer, than they did. (Weirdly, a lot of grandparents actively raise kids these days because of inflation and two-income necessity, so maybe they should be blaming themselves?) There are a lot of fraught generalizations in the “bad parenting” space, and I myself have used many of them in my own writing. I am familiar. But yes, I do think we probably had an uptick in “snowplow” or “helicopter” parenting over the last two decades, and when a Gen Z’er meets Marty Middle Manager who likes to yell, they are uncertain what to do. Because their problems mostly got paved over by mom and university.
Is that generic? Yes. Is it also somewhat true? Yes.
Take a look at this mini-viral moment, too:
There could be an issue around “professional workplace communication,” although honestly, I’ve always felt that issue is a crock of shit non-starter. At work, guys who produce money for a company can talk anyway they want, even sexually-explicit, and no one punishes them. So it feels like, sometimes, we hide behind the idea of “That Gen Z’er isn’t professional,” whereas if that Gen Z’er were in a sales job and crushing, we’d never say that.
In there:
Nguyen said business owners were wary of hiring those born around the turn of the century because they were “often unprepared for a less structured environment, workplace cultural dynamics and the expectation of autonomous work.”
That last part is damning. They basically can’t work by themselves? What’s funny about the use of “autonomous” in that sentence is that it’s soon going to be “automated.” Ha.
And, of course, what’s missing in this entire discussion is the lack of training for these young bucks. It seems like HR and middle managers are just bitching about it and hiding behind how busy they are.
What’s your take?