Is Gen Z Really This Bad At Work?
Most evidence seems to point that way, but every situation is different.
Vitaly Gariev | Pexels The below quote 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.
"Another HR exec characterized Gen Z this was: "They're kids. They're right out of school. They have their own idea of what work is. They want work-life balance. Mental health is incredibly important to them. I've never seen so many young people with problems. I tell my assistant, "This is like a halfway house we're running."
That’s an alarmist quote regarding Gen Z's work ethic.
If you go anywhere on TikTok or YouTube, you will find similar videos and stitches regarding how seemingly awful Gen Z are as employees.
Mizuno K | Pexels
I have not worked with any Gen Z directly, although I did have a newsletter editor job for a while that had a lot of Gen Z employees at the company, and it was pretty bad.
If you were to go high-level on why Gen Z are bad work cohort,s you’d probably come to a few controversial reasons:
- Bad parenting models
- Raised by the Internet (see 1, above)
- Too much focus on mental health
- COVID hit them during formative years
- Entitlement (see all of the above)
Those would be the “broad brush” arguments. It 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 lets 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're 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.
Nicoleta Ionescu | Shutterstock
As for the Gen-Z bad parenting argument/issue, it's complicated.
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.
fizkes | Shutterstock
Take a look at this mini-viral moment of a Gen-Z employee announcing he was taking time off.
There could be an issue around “professional workplace communication,” although honestly, I’ve always felt that issue is an absurd non-starter.
At work, guys who produce money for a company can talk any way they want, even 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. Here is the conservative bellwether New York Post:
"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 incriminating. 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 moaning about it and hiding behind how busy they are.
Ted Bauer is a writer and editor. Originally from New York City, he is now based in Fort Worth and has written for publications including HBR, Fast Company, and more.