Why Some Employers are Disappointed with Gen Z Hires

https://www.monitask.com/

Fortune's Orianna Rose Royle reports that, "six in 10 employers say they have already sacked some of the Gen Z workers they hired fresh out of college in recent months."  She cites data from a survey of nearly 1,000 business leaders conducted by Intelligent.  Royle offers some more data from the Intelligent study: 

Employers’ gripe with young people today is their lack of motivation or initiative—50% of the leaders surveyed cited that as the reason why things didn’t work out with their new hire. Bosses also pointed to Gen Z being unprofessional, unorganized, and having poor communication skills as their top reasons for having to sack grads. Leaders say they have struggled with the latest generation’s tangible challenges, including being late to work and meetings often, not wearing office-appropriate clothing, and using language appropriate for the workspace. Now more than half of hiring managers have come to the conclusion that college grads are unprepared for the world of work. Meanwhile, over 20% say they can’t handle the workload.

Now you may or may not have experienced these hiring challenges.  Some have argued that these complaints are overblown, and that they are typical of an older generation of managers that does not understand younger workers' mindsets and habits.  Still, one cannot easily dismiss these concerns expressed by managers.  Their perceptions matter because they will affect hiring practices, as well as the experience of those new hires during their initial months of employment.  

What strikes me, though, is that these hiring managers are not complaining about a lack of business skills such as data analysis, and they aren't pointing out a lack of content knowledge in specific business disciplines.  Instead, they are focused on how young workers conduct themselves.  These managers are focused on the basic blocking and tackling of becoming a professional. Can you show up on time?  Can you communicate clearly?  Can you dress appropriately?  The lesson for those of us in academia is very clear.   We cannot focus only on teaching content knowledge and analytical skills.  We have to prepare students for the day-to-day interactions that will take place in the workforce.  For young workers, the lesson is also very clear: being smart is not nearly enough to succeed in the workplace.  If you are late, disorganized, and/or cannot communicate clearly, no one cares how knowledgeable you are. 

Generational Diversity in the Workplace

One of my students, Caitlyn May, just completed her senior Honors thesis here at Bryant University on the topic of generational diversity in the workforce.  She examined how people perceive others from their own generation, as well as how they perceive individuals from other generations.  Because I have just finished reading her work, I was struck by this article from the Kellogg School about Professor Nicholas Pearce's research on generational diversity in organizations.  Here's an excerpt from the excellent article published on the Kellogg Insights website:

To make diversity work, Pearce says, leaders need to be more aware of the “pain points” that are likely to cause generational tension. “Many times, the tension is blamed on differences in maturity, when in actuality, generational differences are often the source of the conflict,” he says.... Traditionalists and Baby Boomers, for example, tend to give respect deferentially based on one’s position in the hierarchy, while Generation Xers and Millennials are more likely to give respect to those who are seen as deserving—regardless of where they fit in the organization’s hierarchy... One significant cause of intergenerational tension has to do with conflicting attitudes towards loyalty. Older generations tend to be more loyal to institutions—they still believe in what Pearce calls the “implicit social contract,” an understanding that those who pledge their commitment to one company will eventually reap the long-term benefits. Millennials, by contrast, are loyal to individuals. “Many of them saw their parents or grandparents play by those rules and get severed or fired just shy of the retirement party, the gold watch, and the pension that had been promised” he says, which caused a generation-wide shift from institutional loyalty to interpersonal loyalty.