Talking 'bout my generation
TLDR:
Most differences between Gen Z and Millennials are overblow and the differences that do exist are a function of COVID, economic circumstances and social environment. Moreover, if you disaggregate Gen Z, more interesting clusters of behaviours tend to emerge.
At a dinner party last month I mentioned that I was working towards becoming an organsiational psychologist and one of the guests looked immediately interested. Her eyes widened and in a slightly exasperated tone asked “is there any research into how I can manage the Gen Z people in my team?”. Like me she was a millennial and she explained that she was finding the generational gap hard to bridge. Well, I didn’t have a particularly great answer at the time, but with the benefit of some time for thinking and research this post has a few of my thoughts on “generational divides in the workplace”.
Before we get too far into the body of this post, it’s worth creating a bit of alignment over what we mean when talk about each generation:
Baby Boomers are those born between 1946 - 1963 (currently aged 77 - 59 years old)
Generation X are those born between 1963 - 1981 (currently aged 59 - 41 years old)
Millennials are those born between 1981 - 1996 (currently aged 41 - 26 years old)
Generation Z are those born between 1995 - 2012 (currently aged 26 - 10 years old)
This means that Baby boomers are soon to retire, Gen X are entering the later stages of their careers, Millennials make up the bulk of the workforce and the majority of managers, and Gen Z are relatively new to the workforce.
People love to draw conclusions about generational differences - there are countless think-pieces about the problems with Gen Z, the misery of millennials and entitlement of “boomers”. However, in general these generational stereotypes are overblown. Most people across generations have similar preferences: all generations prefer jobs that they find meaningful, all generations dislike micro-managing bosses and all generations benefit from a more psychologically safe work environment. You can even see the similarity when you survey Millennials and Gen Z about why they chose their current job - the relative priority of different categories are the same and area where Millennials score higher (such as work-life balance) could well be a function of age rather than any deep-seated differences.
Where differences do exist, they are extremely difficult to study. It’s hard to compare generations because at any given point in time they are different ages and if you try to compare like-for-like ages the economic and social context is totally different. Moreover, when it comes to workplaces it’s even more difficult. If you have problems in your team in 2023, is it because of the Gen Z workers or the Millennial managers or the objectives set by Gen X / Baby Boomer leadership? It’s probably a mix of all of these factors.
The generational make-up of our workfoce matters because age impacts on how people perceive others in the workplace. Towards the end of last year, I was part of a group of students who ran a research project looking at perceptions of age and work. We ran an implicit association task to understand if people associated younger or older faces with work over leisure. Based on existing literature of ageism in the workplace, we were expecting participants (who covered a broad range of ages) to associate older workers with leisure and younger workers with work. But, to our surprise we found the opposite to be true. Participants significantly associated younger faces with leisure and older faces with work, and this association didn’t change when you controlled for the age of participants. It’s hard with these implicit association tasks to extract why people have the biases they show, but two possible interpretations are:
People view younger workers as lazy
People believe younger workers prioritize work life balance more than their older colleagues
Regardless of which one of these two explanations is driving the bias, age clearly impacts our perception of colleagues (Note: our experiment focused on Millennials vs Baby Boomers rather than looking at Gen Z). But if these implicit associations do speak to real differences in work-leisure trade-offs for milliennials, we may see movements like the 4-day work week to rise further in popularity as these millennials move into positions of power. 46% of Baby Boomers are interested in the 4-day week, whereas that rises to 62% for Millennial and Gen Z workers. In a future where younger generations of workers have more negotiation power, where Millennials are in leadership roles, and where the war for talent has further heated up, I wouldn’t be surprised to see many more companies adopting more flexibility in when people work.
The implict association task suggest that some differences do exist across generations. These differences are likely to be related to environmental factors, so this post will focus on 3 of these environmental factors - a mix of “big” events and workplace trends - and how they could have asymmetric impacts on different generations:
COVID and post-COVID working patterns
The economic environment and ongoing demographic changes in the workforce
Social media, identity and side hustle culture
COVID
One key reason Gen Z employees have had such a different experience of work than the rest of us is because COVID and the resulting changes in work patterns make up the majority of their workplace experience. The increase in virtual working due to COVID led to slower learning for Gen Z employees and less connection with their workplaces. Research from Deci and Ryan suggest that gaining mastery and relatedness with others are two of the core drivers of wellbeing and satisfaction, both of which were hindered by the pandemic. Emerging post-covid work pattern surveys suggest that a portion of work time will stay virtual persistently (such as the quarterly survey from Future Forum). These persistent changes also impact the younger cohort of millennials who only learnt how to become managers during or after COVID. This combination of inhibited learning, less connection and less experienced management is putting more pressure on the Gen Z cohort than any of the older cohorts. Future Forum’s fall survey showed that 49% of 18-to-29-year-olds said they feel burned out compared with 38% of all workers over the age of 30. These post-covid changes in work patterns is also geography-specific: the same survey showed that UK workers are more likely to be working in a “hybrid” model than those in US, France, Germany or Japan. These hybrid work practices offer a lot to staff - they open up flexibility to caregivers and they can offer more experienced workers a good balance - but the costs of these models may fall asymmetrically on less experienced workers. My advice to managers is to build in regular in person working and focus “learning time” on the days you colocation. Opting for a working pattern such as the popular “TWaT” (Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday) colocation model could work well for this.
Economic factors
The second key factor driving generational differences is the economic environment that each Generation has experienced. This can be thought about in broadly two ways: looking back at what each generation “remembers” and looking forward at the likely reality they will face later in their careers. The last really big economic crisis was 2008-2009. Millennials would have been between the ages of 13 and 28 when this took place. I’m on the younger side of the Millenial age bracket but I remember watching the news and seeing the economic reality of queues outside of Northern Rock, shops shutting down and people losing their jobs. If you were a young worker or someone about to enter the workforce you got hit especially hard. Evidence from the National Bureau of Economic Research in the US suggests that starting your first job in a recession can see a 6-10% reduction in lifetime earnings depending on the severity of the recession. You can see how abnormal that period was for young people when you look at the UK youth unemployment data:
With the exception of the COVID spike, Gen Z have only experienced a period of stable employment rates (as of the time of writing). Even during this cycle of interest rate hikes, the labour market has unexpectedly remained tight. At the same time, young people are less able to buy property and their consumer debt levels are near record highs. As a result their motivation and attitude towards work is fundementally different. During the immediate aftermath of the pandemic, we saw many people talk about the Gen Z phenomenon of “quiet quitting”. Millennials I spoke to felt like this was a re-brand of long-standing workplace presenteeism, but subsequent surveys from YouGov do highlight some key differences in how younger workers perceive the importance of going above and beyond in the workplace.
We shouldn’t be too surprised that these two survey questions trend with age; the older someone is, the more likely they are to be in leadership roles where the boundaries of roles get less well defined (and in many companies they are also shareholders). However, the context of historically low unemployment for younger works also plays a key role. That’s partially why the recent layoffs in tech companies have felt so stark. The New York Times recently published an article where they interviewed Gen Z, Millennial and Gen X workers about the current round tech layoffs. Gen X, who have seen the dot com bubble and the global financial crisis, seemed upset but not overwhelmingly surprised, whereas the younger workers seemed more taken aback. While Gen Z have experienced this historical job security, worries of an upcoming recession may shift the narrative. The phrase quiet quitting seems to have fallen out of the discussion of workplace dynamics, and the differences in economic context could easily change.
The economic context, however, is not just backward looking. We have an aging workforce, with structural trends suggesting fewer younger workers will have to support a large population of retired or economically inactive people. This has implications about the negotiating power of young talented workers, especially when the labour market is as tight as it is now. This structural “war for talent” is front of mind of many CEOs. Over 1,300 Execs surveyed last year by Protiviti highlighted the need to attract and retain top talent as the #1 strategic risk for 2023 and for 2032. Even if there are short term increases in unemployment, the long term trend is clear - attracting and retaining amazing workers with crucial skills is going to get harder and harder, leading to more leverage for workers with highly demanded skills. Some people have characterised the youngest generation as “entitled” but the reality is, negotiation power has shifted back towards labour from capital after a prolonged period of low interest rate conditions. This shift in power towards labour will increase the importance of meeting the needs of younger workers, especially their emotional needs (purpose and meaning in their work, feeling respected and being treated fairly, and having good relationships with their colleagues) which drives retention in the long haul.
Social factors
The final factor I want to discuss is the social context that informs differences across generations. Gen Z is the first generation to be raised in a social media age, which has an impact on how they communicate, how they work and how they see themselves. A recent study by Janssen and Carradini looking into Gen Z communication and behaviour suggests some of the immediate changes will be small - the rise of instant communication platforms like slack and more comfort in using video recording as a form of async communication (e.g., tools like Loom). However, there may be more structural changes in the longer term - for example, there is emerging evidence that short form media such as tik tok leads to shorter attention spans. However, the same survey by Janssen and Carradini highlights the awareness that Gen Z participants had in the negative influence of technology. 86% of participants said there deliberately avoided technology when they wanted to focus or when they thought it was not appropriate for them to use phones. This need to “architect an environment” to focus is also a common theme elsewhere in their interviews. Distraction, fragmentation and multi-tasking are all behaviours that worsen our performance in the workplace and the availability of these distractions is higher now than it ever has been. This isn’t purely a generational phenomenon, but rather a feature of ever increasing connectedness. Awareness and proactive management of this fragmentation is a work practice that we should all adopt, and it’s a positive that Gen Z participants were so aware of the problem.
Another element of the social environment Gen Z grew up with is the importance of identity and alignment of values. 77% of Gen Z workers surveyed by Deloitte said that working for a company with values that aligned with theirs was important or very important. The same trend extends to their consumption habits, with 76% of Gen Z consumers saying they have supported or would consider supporting brands who align with them on social issues. This value alignment is especially pronounced when it comes to diversity and inclusion, where Gen Z continue the trend of generations trending more socially inclusive and liberal. A 2021 survey by Tallo suggest that over 80% of Gen Z workers in the US would expect companies to ask for their preferred pronouns, which is a much higher proportion than their millennial counterparts.
A third element of the social context is the relationship between Gen Z and money. Recent surveys indicate a majority of Gen Z adults have a side hustle in the US, and a recent survey from GoldmanSachs indicates that as many as 25% of Gen Z are determined to gain financial independence and retire early. Where some in Gen Z have quietly quit, others have tied their identity to this desire to become financially free. Recent qualitative research with Gen Z adults suggests that same individualisation tendencies that drive younger people to drink less, consume differently and spend more time alone are also driving hustle culture and the persuit of financial autonomy. The same behaviours are often community driven - if you want an extreme example of this visit the "over-employed" subreddit, an online forum which acts as a support group for young people that hold multiple full time jobs at the same time (!!!) .
Currently its easier than ever to start up and independent business and with the rise of AI tools, 2023 looks like it could be the year of the 1-person business. Gen Z appear to be seizing this entrepreneurial opportunity in higher numbers than previous generations. For companies, this create problems with retention and motivation. Gallup’s recent workplace survey shows younger staff have record low engagement. However, this desire to create can also be a positive. Providing younger employees with space to own initiatives and experiment is a huge opportunity for companies to create value, but doing so will require changes in processes and management behaviour.
Intra-generational differences
So we’ve looked at some of the COVID-related factors, economic factors and social factors that may drive inter-generational trends. Another source of difference, however, is differences within generations. Luckily, there has been recent research which can help us disaggregate the Gen Z cohort based on survey responses. This paper by Leslie et al uses Q-methodology to identify similar clusters of responses in their Gen Z participants. They find 3 main groups of Gen Z emerge (please note: these are their names not mine!):
Social Investors - They care about the social impact of their work, but work life balance is crucial and work is not their priority.
“I’m not looking for fulfillment solely in my career. I have a personal life that gives me meaning”
Chill Worker Bees - Work and in particular job security is more important to this group. They tend to be productive workers who prioritise feeling physically and emotionally safe at work.
“Job security is important to me. Uncertainty increases stress and decreases motivation”
Go Getters - They are ambitious workers who tend to seek resume-building skills to place themselves in the best position possible in their careers
“Feedback is crucial to getting my work done and done well. The opinion of those I do work for is important”
The whole paper is worth a read, but the clustering highlights the point made earlier - generation-level trends are often not that helpful if we’re trying to understand individual behaviour. Even breaking it down to these three groups allows us to make much more nuanced suggestions. Understanding social purpose and managing work life balance is most important for the Social Investors. Creating an inclusive and psychologically safe work environment is especially important for the Chill Worker Bees. Colocation and rapid feedback is especially crucial to Go Getters, but they may present a greater retention risk because of their desire to become entrepreneurs.
All three groups have had similar environmental influences, which tends to nudge them in the same direction, but the exact preferences and ways of working are much more nuanced. Clustering similar motivations can give us a bit of a frame to think about how to best manage people.
So I guess when asked at that dinner party, how to best manage Gen Z workers - I should have really asked, what kind of Gen Z workers are in your teams?
