How do we recognize a new generation when we see one? Demographers, sociologists, historians, and other experts often debate this very question, just as experts differ about the exact parameters of each generation.
There is plenty of debate about where Generation X begins and ends, and the Millennials, and Generation Z. The truth is the definitions are always in flux because the boundaries themselves are continually being redefined.
Some define Millennials as being born beginning anywhere from 1978 to 1981. Similarly, the post-Millennial generation, known to most as Generation Z, begins with a birth-year roughly around 1997.
No matter which specific definition you use, we can all agree Gen Zers were tiny children on September 11, 2001. They were about a decade old at the end of the deepest and most protracted global recession since the Great Depression, in 2008. And they began entering high school, pursuing post-secondary education, or entering the workforce during the disruptions of the Global Pandemic in 2020.
Today’s young professionals are beginning their careers in a post-Pandemic “new normal” of remote and hybrid work, permanently constrained resources, increased requirements placed on workers, and fewer promised rewards for nearly everyone. From day one, they find themselves bumping up against a crowded field of career-delayed Millennials, not to mention plenty of even older workers who themselves may have faced career setbacks.
While the Millennials were children of the peace and prosperity of the 1990s, Generation Z are children of the war and uncertainty and recession and pandemic of the 2000s. They have been indelibly shaped by an era of profound change and perpetual anxiety.
Of course, there are some things about being young and new in the workplace that do remain much the same from generation to generation. Every new generation has its own unique formative history and comes into the workplace challenging—often inadvertently—the current status quo in new and unexpected ways that are largely determined by the accidents of history shaping each new era. However, there are clear trend lines from Generation X to Millennials and Generation Z.
As a whole, Generation Z represents a continuation and perhaps the culmination of much larger historical forces driving transformations in the workplace that will redefine the experience of workers of all ages:
· Globalization
· Rapidly advancing technology
· The death of old-fashioned job security
· The infinite information firehose
· The accelerating pace of everything
· Increasing human diversity
In one sense, Gen Z is not really much different from the generations who came before them. After all, we are all living through these historical changes together. In another sense, Generation Z represents a whole new breed of worker, ushering in the final stages of the great generational shift under way in the workforce.
These are the two major differences, and the one critical similarity, between Gen Z and their older colleagues.
Yes, they’re the first true digital natives.
Gen Z has learned to think, learn, and communicate in an environment defined by wireless internet ubiquity, wholesale technology integration, infinite content, and immediacy. They are totally plugged in—whether through social media, search engines, or instant messaging—to each other as well as an infinite array of answers to any question at any time. As a result, many Gen Zers seem especially precocious to leaders and managers.
Helicopter parenting reached a peak with Gen Z.
While the availability of information has made many Gen Zers wise beyond their years, helicopter parenting also reached a new apex during their childhoods. This is partly why traditional relationship boundaries between children and adults have blurred: Gen Zers have in some ways been treated as customers of services provided by institutions and authority figures. Parents and their parenting-posses—think relatives, friends, teachers, coaches, and counselors—are mobilized to supervise and support the every move of children, validate their differences, diagnose their weaknesses, and set them up with every possible material advantage.
Gen Z doesn’t want to be coddled, humored, or pandered to.
Too many managers hear that they need to effusively praise young workers regardless of performance, help them work only in their chosen areas of passion and strength, reward them with trophies just for showing up, let them work whenever they want, try to make work “fun,” and basically let them manage themselves.
Of course, in the real world, that advice is nonsense. That’s especially true now that more and more workers of all ages are working remotely, at least some of the time.
Young people are not a bunch of disloyal, delicate, lazy, greedy, disrespectful, inappropriate slackers with short attention spans and won’t take “no” for an answer. Just like their older colleagues, most young people want leaders who take them seriously at work. They want leaders who set them up for success in the real world, not leaders who pretend they are succeeding no matter what they do.
Yes, of course, today’s young people want more money, more flexibility, more training, more interesting projects, and more exposure to decision-makers. Yes, they want more of everything! But they don’t expect any of it on a silver platter. They just want to know, every step of the way, “Exactly what do I need to do to earn what I want?”
