Resist The Urge! Why Adapting to Gen Z Could Hurt Your Company
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If you’re a Chief Human Resources or Chief People Officer, then you can request to join a brand new community I put together called Future Of Work Leaders which focuses on the future of work and employee experience. Join leaders from Tractor Supply, Johnson & Johnson, Lego, Dow, Northrop Grumman and many others. We come together virtually each month and once a year in-person to tackle big themes that go beyond traditional HR.
I’m working on a new employee experience book which will come out at some point mid-late 2025 and as a part of the book research I’m interviewing over 100 CHROs at some of the world’s top companies. One of the themes that keeps coming up is around multiple generations at work, specifically Gen Z.
This isn’t a new topic, in fact I’ve written about this over a decade ago when my book, The Future of Work, first came out in 2014. When it comes to Gen Z the question of, “what should we do as a company to adapt?” is the big area of question.
This makes a big assumption, which is that we should be adapting to Gen Z to begin with, which I argue, we shouldn’t. In fact doing so will be detrimental to our organizations.
Now Gen Z is a unique bunch for several reasons which are outlined in several recent books including The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, Bad Therapy by Abigail Shrier, and several others.
If you read any of these books or take a look at some of the recent research on Gen Z you will see that findings are quite alarming. Then you’ll realize that adapting your organization to cater to this generation is not a good idea.
So what’s the solution? Let’s go behind the velvet rope to explore this in more detail.
Gen Z was born between 1997–2012 and there are a few things that make this generation very unique. First, this is the only generation so far which has grown up with screens and they have had less face to face interaction than every other generation. As younger kids this was a generation that was also hit with a huge spike in safetyism, meaning they were protected from physically from anything that could hurt them such as “unsafe” playgrounds and they were also protected emotionally from disagreeable ideas and information.
Haidt and other researchers and authors argue that this has widely contributed to their stunted development of social skills, specifically around emotional intelligence, communication, confidence, collaboration, conflict resolution, and resiliency. Being raised with technology has also contributed to high levels of anxiety, stress, loneliness, and depression.
On top of that we had a pandemic that locked us all in our homes for several years which further exacerbated all of the above and also added in the impact of learning loss.
In short, this is a generation which has been hit hard by a few forces which simply put have left them unprepared for the workforce or for life in general.
Why would you want to adapt your organization for this kind of an employee? Doing so would mean: creating an organization where resiliency is not rewarded, avoiding conflicting ideas and critical discussions, stifling innovation, fostering a sense of entitlement with employees expecting undue accommodations, diluting your organizational culture, leading to a loss of identity and cohesion, reducing accountability, and the list goes on. It also means that your organization becomes the new parent to the new children who work there.
Instead of changing your core workplace practices to adapt to Gen Z, make investments in promoting competence, resiliency, skills training and development, and leadership.
Teach your employees what it means to do a great job and the importance of going above and beyond while making occasional sacrifices.
Teach them what it means to take on a big challenge, to fail, and then to try again, and again, and again.
Teach them the skills they need to know to be future ready and why and how these skills are going to be crucial for their success.
Teach what it means to lead and what great leadership looks like inside of your organization.
Teach them the values that your company stands for and show them how those values come to life at work.
Teach that it’s ok, and in fact, encouraged to disagree with someone else as long as you can do so in a respectful way.
Teach them that psychological safety doesn’t mean you life in a bubble where nothing can or should upset or hurt you.
Teach them that life and work are tough and to succeed you need to be tough too!
This is what Generation Z (and in fact all generations) need from their employers. Don’t adapt to Gen Z, use this time as a unique opportunity to develop Gen Z into future ready employees and leaders.
If you’re a Chief Human Resources or Chief People Officer, then you can request to join a brand new community I put together called Future Of Work Leaders which focuses on the future of work and employee experience. Join leaders from Tractor Supply, Johnson & Johnson, Lego, Dow, Northrop Grumman and many others. We come together virtually each month and once a year in-person to tackle big themes that go beyond traditional HR.
