To find managing gen z a massive headache

[Managinggenzoclock]

I’m a millennial and I manage a team of people. Some of them are gen z. It may be individual personalities but these are the things winding me up.. please excuse this rant. Is it just me? I manage people from late teens to early 60s. The younger group are by far the hardest work.

• Very interested in career progression and pay (not a bad thing but see below)
• at the same time not being willing to ever (I’m not talking often) work more hours or support a colleague
• not willing to recognise that anyone knows more than them, even those with decades more experience
• resisting hierarchical management structures
• making lots of mistakes (including repeated over and over) but not have the humility of inexperience/ youth which would make this much less annoying
• trying to patronisingly ‘educate’ people on contentious issues in inappropriate ways.

I think maybe I’m being too nice.

I've suddenly reached the age when I don't know who anyone is, GC think it's hilarious. I've turned into one of those High Court Judges who said, "The Beatles? Who are these Beatles."

Beware of laughing at barmy boomers, you too will get old (with a bit of luck) and wonder who The Beatles are.

As a 1977 Gen X’r, the older millennials (early 80’s folk) aren’t too far apart in age from us, so I have no issue with them.

We grew up with the same stuff, same environments etc so there’s little difference between younger Gen X’rs and older Millennials.

Gen Z however, wind me right up. These guys are the Cancel Culture generation. And they can bog right off 🤣🤣

Absolutely agree - same here. :)

YANBU OP
I can't wait to retire as I've had enough🙄

Humans are humans and each generation will have a spread of traits at individual levels. There will always be grafters and the workshy. Generational experiences and cultures can shift the balance and development of those traits though.

I was born on the cup of Gen X/ Millenials. As someone who reached adulthood in the 20th Century the Gen X experience/ culture makes more sense to me than Millenial and the Xennial micro-generation description rings true.

Corporal punishment was still legal in schools when I started school and a "you can't touch me" attitude hadn't developed yet. My cohort was still free to drop out of school. I'm not saying that was a good thing, but educational change will influence the attitudes of a generation. When politics means that schools can't let children fail or face natural consequences, and pupils are spoonfed that does change broader attitudes and culture. The culture changes when the answer is in the phone in your pocket, not in volume 8 of the encyclopedia in the library. The culture changes when university becomes mainstream, graduate jobs are not what they were or you end up in a minimum wage job despite your degree and student debt, or when Saturday jobs for teenagers are no longer a thing because adults on 0hours contracts are now doing them.

Each generation faces its own shaping cultures and experiences. World Wars, the trauma they caused and the continuing of rationing into the 1950s affected both the generations that lived through them and the children they raised.

Some trends are just the eternal cycle of youth and age/ experience, but generations do get shaped by shared wider experiences too, and they've long been studied to investigate their needs/ how society changes and their impact on society/ the economy.

@BogRollBOGOF you are BEAUTIFUL

I really dislike people who feel the need to put people into neat little categories and seem to believe that every individual is basically going to think and behave in the same way simply based on the decade they were born in.

Maybe you just need to be less rigid in your thinking and stop using sweeping generalisations.

How about:

• Very interested in career progression and pay: they don't want to be exploited by employers, stuck in dead-end jobs and paid peanuts
• At the same time not being willing to ever (I’m not talking often) work more hours or support a colleague: they are asserting their rights not to do unpaid hours and to have a life beyond work and don't want to prop up employers who don't invest in training and don't recruit enough staff to do the job
• not willing to recognise that anyone knows more than them, even those with decades more experience. they realise that someone might have spent 10 year in the job but still be useless at it. You only have to look at the calibre of the average UK managerial staff to know that very often people get promoted way beyond their ability and make everyone else's life a misery
• resisting hierarchical management structures. they know we have moved on from the workhouse or serfdom
• making lots of mistakes (including repeated over and over) but not have the humility of inexperience/ youth which would make this much less annoying: they are working with people who can't wait to patronise them and use terms and statements that smack of ageism
• trying to patronisingly ‘educate’ people on contentious issues in inappropriate ways. they openly challenge sexism, racism and homophobia in the workplace.

There, fixed it for you.

Nah….my ‘kids’ are now all early 40s. They were far less entitled, difficult and unreasonable than my boomer generation.

I quite like the Gen Z's I have in my team. The only major issue I ever had with a staff member who was a millennial who in their first two hours on the job told me no one in organisation was as good as they were, spent all their time on their mobile phone shopping and also requested that we change all our HR policies to work round them. It went downhill from there.

Needless to say they didn't make it through their probation.

Isn't it pretty important that younger generations are a pain in the arse? That's the point. Fresh ideas without the baggage. They drive change.

Millennials were a pain in their early 20's and as a result companies started taking diversity and sustainability seriously. Workplaces got more flexible and less formal.

Now gen z are doing the same. It may be frustrating one to one but is how society grows.

I also don't agree that the rise of illiberalism is a generation thing. I think it's driven by algorithms feeding and creating echo chambers of righteousness. It's impacting every generation.

I manage a cross section of people of all ages, from 23 year old grads to a 62 yr old and everything in between. It has never occurred to me to label them as gen whatever…

The younger team members are great, really keen and imaginative. Surely it’s down to the person rather than what decade they were born in?

Entitled, smug, anxious, know alls has been my experience……maybe it’s just me

<pedant alert> Pliny the Elder was not Greek. He was a Roman soldier, author and naturalist. He died in 79 AD as a result of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, as documented later by his nephew, Pliny the Younger, who was also an author.

Good luck to any young people who are 'against the idea of employment'. How do they expect to be able to support themselves and pay the bills? Self-employment is not an easy option. Most people who make a go of it have years of experience in employment before they branch out on their own.

Thinking about it the age group I ‘like’ the most to work with are those in their 40s. They grew up without the toxic Internet and inspirational quotes, but don’t have the boomer selfishness and lack of self awareness.

I bloody love my GenZers. I don't want them to go 'above and beyond'. I'm not paying them for that. I pay a good full time salary and a decent full time work is all I expect. No working themselves to death, glued to phone in case boss emails at 10pm on a Sunday night, like us GenX. That was just stupid.

And I also recognize that they are digital natives, so yes they can teach me something. I might be more experienced and better in what we do in general, but not how to use all the tools available nowadays.

but don’t have the boomer selfishness and lack of self awareness.

Do you ever stop?

This!

when Saturday jobs for teenagers are no longer a thing

My teen DD has a job and so do all her friends.

I’m not sure which post this quote comes from but agree same here

I’m Gen x and I’m pretty sure a boomer colleague of mine once described another (GenX) colleague in almost the same terms when she first started working for our company. Gen X colleague now has an MBE for contribution to her industry and is top of her field. She has advised the government (Cameron’s lot not the current pile of shite) and is frequently adorning double page spreads of Sunday newspapers….

GenZs might be pains in the rear end but they will learn and hopefully won’t accept a lot of the shit we had to from those older than us. They are switched on as to what is acceptable and what they are being paid for. Good on them for standing up for themselves. It took me 15yrs working and a near nervous breakdown to learn to say no to requests, to ignore hierarchy, and to realise that sometimes when people said ‘I’m more experienced than you’ it actually meant ‘we’ve always done it this way so don’t try to change it.’

i fully appreciate it’s probably annoying as hell but the GenZs are going to have to change/save this world so don’t ask them to do conform to how we did it. Encourage them to break the mould.

Another older Mum here, I’ve noticed that parents (often) don’t allow their kids to feel any discomfort, ie snacks are constantly on hand so kids never have a chance to get hungry. Behaviour which is not great getting blamed on tiredness (relevant but as they get older shouldn’t be an excuse always), I see a lot of general entitlement from parents. I feel building up resilience is key, don’t get me wrong I make lots of mistakes daily but these are just general observations from someone raised in the ‘seen not heard generation’

Why should I? Here we are all having a merry rant about the generation that annoys us the most. Why doesn’t everyone else stop?

Is it projection? Odd, obsessive behaviour.

No, just the opportunity to get it off my chest! Why is what I say ageist but this thread isn’t?

Tbh you have a point I just see people laying into other groups. Except Gen X who is forgotten, luckily!