Gen Z and its strategic concerns

Defying stereotypes and expectations, younger employees seem to be the only ones prioritising strategic challenges from their leadership, looking into the long-term to find value and impact.

There are roughly two billion Zoomers in the world today, and they are absolutely ready to take over the workforce - shattering our expectations about them along the way, as our recent survey indicated.

By the end of this year, it is estimated that those born between 1996 and 2010 will surpass the number of the once dominant Baby Boomers in the workplace. By 2025, they are expected to represent close to one third of total employees. 

Corporate leadership, on the other hand, seems far less ready to welcome the younger generations into the corporate world. An abundance of surveys paints a picture of undeniable reluctance: a recent study showed that 63% of hiring managers express concerns about Gen Z’s tendency to job hop, while also 50% have doubts about their reliability and 46% question their work ethic.

There are a number of reasons for the stress or panic behind Zoomer’s unavoidable takeover of  the workplace. Some managers are troubled by the fact that younger employees entered the workforce during COVID, when ways of working were undergoing massive transformation. Others struggle to understand their concerns and different workflows, given that they are the first generation to be completely digitally native and to have grown up with the internet as an essential part of their daily life.

Then there also are a number of stereotypes, which are persisting and often unwarranted. Gen Zers, according to HR chatter, can be overly sensitive, lazy, quickly disillusioned and in constant need of coddling by their managers.

But as it turns out, our data paints a completely different story for Zoomers and their expectations from management. When we asked employees themselves, across three different markets, to identify challenges they have with their leadership and to rate their frequency and importance in a recent survey, the youngest participants gave us astonishing responses that challenged a number of common assumptions. 

You may be surprised, but they actually expect more strategic thinking from their management, they care a lot more about the long-term vision compared to their older colleagues, and they can completely perceive when their leaders display a lack of trust towards them.

Read on as we explore what Gen Zers are actually struggling with when it comes to their leadership, and give the voice to a number of Zoomers who break down their challenges and expectations from the workplace.

♟️Younger employees are the only ones prioritising strategic concerns

In case you missed it, our survey asked employees in the UK, Greece and South Korea to select the challenges they face from their leadership, while also giving them the opportunity to assess their frequency and importance. The rationale behind this methodology was quite clear: we wanted to unearth not only the most prevalent pain points for different demographics, but also discover how important they deem these problems to be in their daily work life. 

In our last article, we already discussed how every demographic selected “lack of recognition for one’s achievements” as the most common pain point from their management. The same was true for Zoomers and young millennials participants (25-34 year olds), with one in four placing it in the top 5 most frequent challenges they face with their leadership.

However, when it comes to ranking importance, a very different picture emerges for Zoomers. Turns out, Gen Z is not in need of constant coddling and comfort as management often expects - in fact it believes recognition is far less important compared to other workforce challenges. A total of 10 different challenges come higher in importance before reaching the recognition challenge for this age group (3.54/4 in the importance scale). 

In contrast, older millennials (35-44 year olds) rate recognition as the third most important challenge with management (3.71/4), while Gen X employees (44-55 year olds) put lack of recognition at the top of their most important pain points (3.82/4). So, who’s in need of constant coddling now, boomer?

Instead of being concerned about feedback or feeling recognised, Zoomers interestingly picked a different set of challenges atop their importance pyramid. 

⚖️The option “subjective views are prioritised over objective data”, a strategic challenge, emerged as the most important one for young employees with a 3.89 importance rating. 

⏳Additionally, tied for third place came two equally fascinating problems: the challenges “we don’t keep up with changes in the outside world” (innovation) and “we prioritise the short term over long term” (strategy) both scored a 3.75/4 in the importance rating.

The scatter plot comparing frequency and importance of challenges for employees between the ages of 25 and 34. As you can see strategic challenges (yellow) are at the top of the importance scale.

It is not just that Zoomers and young millennials find strategic challenges much more important than their managers might anticipate - it’s also that they may be the only age group in the workforce to do so. To take a look at the comparison, older millennials believe pain points related to culture are far more important, Gen Xers are extremely preoccupied with feedback challenges, while Boomers pick alignment as their predominant concern. 

In all three age groups, unlike younger employees, strategic or innovation challenges were nowhere to be found in their top 10 challenges ranked in terms of importance.

Eleni Anastasiadis, a young employee in Content Marketing with experience across Greece, the UK and Canada believes that Gen Z’s strategic and innovation concerns may stem from their anxiety about their own professional and financial future. “Given the economic situation with affordability and cost of living, I think young people have a tendency to look far into the future and think: well, how am I going to get an apartment, or how am I going to provide for a family? At least that's how I think”, she tells REBORRN. “And so we would like to see this concern also reflected by our workplace environments. We want to feel like it is not only looking out for us for the next couple of months, but that it provides opportunities for intellectual and financial growth”.

🔭Zoomers are zooming into the long-term

Another common misunderstanding that often follows younger employees in the workplace is that they are obsessed with living in the present. Many leaders will be quick to say that Gen Z and young millennials lack foresight, or that once their small attention span makes them lose interest, they are likely to hop off to the next project - if not to pack their bags and venture out for the next job.

While it is definitely true that Zoomers are more likely to leave a job than their older employees, and they definitely do not believe that job-hopping should carry a stigma, our data once again points to an established misconception. It is not because they are looking at everything with a short-term lens, our survey suggests. In fact it might be because companies are the ones doing exactly what they blame Zoomers for.

When looking at the challenges faced by employees aged 25 to 34 years old purely based on the number of selections across the three markets, the number one pain point identified is that leadership often operates as if everything is urgent, with a total of 62% of young respondents selecting it as something they see from their management. At a close second place comes another familiar challenge: 60.5% of our Zoomer and young millennial respondents believe that management is prioritising the short term over the long term. 

As it turns out, young employees also believe that their managers frequently lack foresight or are getting the prioritisation of tasks wrong, often operating as if everything deserves absolute urgency even if it may not necessarily be the case. And Gen Z also believes management may have a short attention span, maintaining a narrow focus on the short term and frequently neglecting important strategic dimensions that have more to do with long term impact.

The top 10 challenges in terms of number of selections for employees between the ages 25 and 34.

James Anastasopoulos, a 27-year-old software engineer at Kpler, had a rather interesting insight on why Zoomers may be zooming into the long-term more than other employees, and why they might be expecting leadership to do the same. 

“I believe this perspective is shaped by the unique challenges Gen Z has encountered upon entering the workforce”, they told REBORRN. “They have faced compounding economic, environmental and healthcare crises, all of which have informed their definition of urgency. Consequently they have little tolerance for issues arising from lack of foresight and preparation. In contrast, they prioritise long term goals, especially those with significant wide-reaching impact”.

😱Gen Z despises fear and lack of trust

Lastly, it would not be a proper Uncensored article looking at Gen Z and its concerns from management, if it didn’t take a shot at shattering misconceptions with regards to office culture. It is something multiple HR professionals have been trying to get right in order to attract and retain Zoomer employees, emphasising diversity and inclusion initiatives (though often in a non-meaningful way, as we previously examined) or talking up their mental health initiatives and their flexible work schemes in employment value propositions.

Of course, these are all things considered quite important by young employees. But as has often been the case with our survey, here again we find that the most important culture-related challenges Zoomers have from their leadership are nowhere near mentioned by established corporate thinking.

Turns out, the second most important challenge for employees between the ages of 25 and 34 is “we have a culture of leading with fear” (3.82/4), while the fourth most important pain point is “there is a lack of trust” (3.74/4). 

It is important to note that both of these challenges were relatively rare, with less than half of our Zoomer participants identifying them in their corporate leadership. However when they were actually present in the workplace, they were considered incredibly crucial by Gen Z employees, in fact massively outranking many challenges that one would expect would be very near and dear to their hearts, such as lack of diversity (3.42/4) or lack of accountability or ownership (3.40).

Eleni seems to think that this is because of a number of factors. “I think it's mainly a culture shift”, she explains. “Things have shifted from a very corporate environment to a more start-up, flexible environment. Along with that, the culture also has to shift in terms of avoiding micromanaging or lack of trust. It’s definitely a generational change”.

Hannah, a 28-year old consultant from the UK, also agrees with Eleni’s sentiment. “I think one thing is for sure: the Machiavellian archetype of the fearful manager is not going to work with younger employees”, she told REBORRN. “Gen Z does not respond nearly as well to fear and to discipline. Instead I think it gravitates much more towards a leadership style that includes empathy, enables open conversation and encourages experimentation”.

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Thank you for reading our latest Uncensored piece, the second one of our Decoding Leadership Challenges series. In case you missed our report, click here to download it or explore the open-source data in a dynamic table. You can go back to read our first article, looking at why most employees don’t feel recognised, and make sure to join us again for our next article where we will be discussing how different cultures can pose different leadership challenges.