If there’s one phrase that’s sure to get anyone in the office on edge, it’s “intergenerational tension.” These words hide simmering resentments, fears, and plain old prejudices. It’s a timeless story: As long as humans fear age and irrelevance, we will also fear the young.
These professional fault lines are often hidden behind a wall of basic politeness, terrible HR “inclusion and belonging” jargon, and lofty words about bringing our all to work. But news this week the fact that two of the big four consultancies, PwC and Deloitte, believe the graduates they hire have weaker teamwork and communication skills than previous cohorts has brought the debate back into the open. PwC calls on experienced customer-facing staff to become graduate coaches. At Deloitte, new enrollees will attend daunting-sounding sessions on “mental resilience, overcoming adversity, and the importance of mindset.”
This is the latest in a long line of intergenerational workplace battles. In the early 2000s, boomers and Generation X workers, who were expected to be “seen and not heard” as junior employees, were complaining about “entitled millennials” who brazenly demanded higher pay and a promotion. (I confess: I groaned). In fact, millennials have done us a huge favor: We’ve all learned to be less passive at work.
Decades later, many of that rapidly aging cohort of millennials (the oldest were born in 1981) are complaining about Gen Z college graduates and their potentially client-scarying habit of sharing too much about physical and mental health matters. These new employees, born 1997 onwards, have largely grown up in the online age of instant connection and global reach. No wonder they may seem too familiar – they approach the world very differently.
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Having entered the workplace during a pandemic, Gen Z may take offense to the assumption that newcomers have to subscribe to rules established in an earlier professional era. We have to turn that narrative around. Workplace norms inevitably change to suit young people, not the other way around. Demographics are unstoppable: by 2025, Generation Z will make up 27% of the workforce in OECD countries and rising. Retention is another reason. Gen Z personnel will walk away if they feel unappreciated.
Edelman, a consultancy that has studied young people’s attitudes and beliefs, strikes a note of caution on Deloitte-PwC’s assumptions about Gen Z workplace skills. “Perhaps it’s that digital norms are fundamentally different from norms in person,” says its global head of employee engagement, Cydney Roach. “It has become normal not to contribute in a digital environment, since there are so many people on the call; again this leads to an issue down the line where junior team members are not talking.
To keep Generation Z on board, the rest of us will need to be more understanding. Have you ever seen a Gen Z person enjoy talking on the phone at work? Obviously not. Mostly, they live in a flow of message awareness. Advances in technology will change the way we communicate at work, and while we can’t predict how this will play out, we can rest assured that the revolution will be led by those who were practically born online. Older staff should just accept it (then complain on WhatsApp to our age appropriate colleagues).
Leaders who get it wrong now face the added threat of online notoriety. A clip of Andi Owen, chief executive of furniture brand MillerKnoll, has gone viral after she told staff to leave ‘sinner city’ when they complained they weren’t getting bonuses. It will continue to happen as Gen Z refuses to remain silent when she suffers workplace injustice. Chiefs, take note.
Just as millennials disrupted outdated hierarchies, Gen Z will eventually make work better for everyone. She buckles up, though—she might take some getting used to.
Writer hosts FT Working It podcast and newsletter, isabel.berwick@ft.com
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