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 also don’t hold with it (as I said many posts up) but from what I can tell on this thread my firm’s recruitment seems to do a much better job than others at weeding out those with no initiative or common sense.

@ODFOx 'Lack of focus, lack of resilience which is overcompensated for by superficial confidence and some aggression.' - this!!

Thanks be noticed they are over-confident/insubordinate on one hand and then crying about lack of confidence the next.

They baffle me 😂 I just try to figure out how to give them the right level of support and freedom so we can all be happy and productive.

Brilliant.

I’m working with a 23 year old at the moment. It’s just two of us, the manager quit a couple of weeks ago and she’s desperate for the job despite it being her first time in this role which she started 3 months ago.
There’s a weird atmosphere now because i have 20 years on her in this work and she obviously thinks she’s competing against me. I’m sad because we were getting on so well and she’s changed.
The other day she text my boss while I was on the phone speaking with her and the boss accidentally was reading aloud what she said about me. So she’s being underhanded now pointing out errors too. She also admitted she goes into our private messages on teams and reads them, we all know each other’s password they’re kind of generic

It's definitely getting worse with new recruits ( I say that as I approach 60 having managed people for 39 years). Of course there's personality involved but it's much worse than it's been before.

A few similar examples I've come across:

• getting stressed by having a deadline
• needing time off for random issues that simply show no resilience
• asking for promotion or a raise after being in the job 2 months and still not operating at a competent level (they haven't even paid back the cost of their recruitment yet)
• not realising they will benefit from learning and listening to build their experience and expertise
• taking exception to doing elements of their role (I point out that as CEO I don't actually enjoy doing board meetings but it's an essential part of my role)
• wanting to deliver lectures on diversity, equity and inclusion all the time whilst not actually being respectful of older members of staff or different points of view
• wanting the place to be run as a democracy where everyone sits around moaning.
• poor focus on the objectives of the organisation rather than just being there to provide jobs for them - this particularly rankles as I work in the not for profit sector with clear beneficiaries as our pyropes.

If you keep hiring people like this, isn't your recruitment process at fault?

I think as a couple of others have said there is really something here about clarity - clarity in recruitment, clarity in job descriptions, clarity in on-the-job feedback and expectation setting. I think I'm generally regarded as a 'nice' manager but I am a hard-ass in recruitment. I know exactly what I'm looking for and deliberately devise tests that put applicants under stress (eg give them a timed test that can't reasonably be completed in the time available and then coming face to face with them immediately afterwards) - because that's how you find out whether someone can cope. Everyone will say they work well under pressure in their application but you need to find out whether that's actually true! Similarly it's not hard to devise recruitment tests that find out whether someone will happily use their initiative or not.

Similarly, in post, once you have your crystal clear job description that they signed as a part of their contract, wriggling out of defined duties is just not on the table. If they try it, it's straight onto gentle reminder/stronger reminder/verbal warning. Doesn't matter if they don't like it!

I know exactly what I'm looking for and deliberately devise tests that put applicants under stress (eg give them a timed test that can't reasonably be completed in the time available and then coming face to face with them immediately afterwards)

I wouldn't insult anyone for not wanting to work for you.

On the DEI stuff, much as I'm old and personally object to some of it, what Gen Zers and younger millennials think about this stuff will be absolutely standard operating procedure in most businesses in 30 years time. And maybe, gasp, we can actually learn from them about some of this stuff? I've worked in organisation in London that have barely any BAME staff. Isn't it worth asking the question about company culture when that happens? It might actually be useful to put some time aside to think about how a rigid mindset might be holding the company back. Doesn't mean you have to agree with everything the Young Folk say, any more than they have to agree with you. People the same age as me will remember working in offices where homophobic and sexist jokes were the norm. We didn't like it and when we got older and more senior we changed it. I definitely rolled my eyes at the worst of it when I was in my first job. When you become the old gimmer yourself it's worth holding in mind the possibility that you aren't 100% correct about everything!

I empathise with the OP in many ways but despite my frustrations (xennial senior manager) with some GenZ and young Millennials at work I am developing (slowly!) techniques to manage them out of negative behaviours OR frankly just accept what goes with managing them.
The fact is none of them can afford a mortgage on their early career wage in my sector, the economic situation they have is worse than the one I inherited, so what that means is they aren't beholden to the pay check they get at work - they job hop like nothing I've ever known, and are keen to move for very little salary increase even, just to try something new. A complete nightmare to manage a cohesive team in that context and leadership are being too slow to adapt to help (I.e. find innovative ways to retain staff!) Their confidence is both baffling to me and admirable - I just try and shape it into beneficial for their role rather than getting other team members backs up!
The most difficult thing is reconciling a workplace culture in a smallish owner-led business from Gen X/Boomer expectations (work for free to get ahead and be grateful) with newer work expectations. I'm firmly on the side of the GenZers to be honest, they just need to be less annoying about getting there!
(Had one employee take a week off sick for mental health because of disagreement with a colleague - absolutely no resilience and such an introspective (selfish) attitude as prioritises self over everyone else in team.)
As a xennial I do see myself as a bit of mediator between GenZ expectations and hyper capitalist work culture set by generations gone by and trying to pick and choose the best as we move forward into our brave, new, complicated world!!

Heh @ReneBumsWombats it weeds out the ones who can't cope with what the role is actually like (routinely too much to do in too little time, need to quickly and sensibly prioritise and not lose your shit while doing so). I'm sure some of the applicants went away thinking that I was a pain in the arse, but my 360 feedback from the people I actually recruit is mint, and I never have people crying in the toilets. (Not least because in regular one to ones I ask them if anything is getting on top of them and if something is we make a strategy for dealing with it.)

inductions sessions at many companies are currently giving grads training in how to get dressed appropriately for work. Apparently you can’t rely on common sense there.
It's the same some years with teacher training. They have to explain that dress codes apply to everyone.

I've also known course tutors have to deliver sessions to adults explaining that when experienced staff observed you it is part of the training process. They've had to explain that constructive feedback is not personal criticism and it's expected that people who're 5 minutes into training will need support to get better and if you don't take on board what your qualified and experienced colleagues say then you're unlikely to improve.

There were a couple of people when I trained who seemed to have a LOT of conflict in their schools and not take criticism well, but never enough to warrant training sessions for the whole cohort.

I don't think young people have changed too much (as cola above says this has been an issues of hundreds of years - there are good quoes from Shakespeare too - "Crabbed age and youth, cannot be together...") but that over the decades we are making more allowances for them. We don't haze the young recruits at the factory by putting their hair near the furnace to singe. We don't make someone who was up all night without over time working on a law deal be in at 8am next day saying it was like that in my day. We are kinder, perhaps too kind and the young people have been brought up knowing their rights, including rights to litigate perhaps more than their moral duties in life and instead of being told put up with something bad, they say MeTo I will sue...

So the latter is the change. I think if often comes down to economics - for the first tim in my adult life (and I am 60) we have had a period of vacancies for jobs, even down here in the SE signs on bars - staff wanted so the power has slightly shifted to the young job seekers. That will not last long as we are going into a massive recession due to the debts we chose to incur as a State during covid so once jobs become much harder to obtain young people will stop their demands; the support dogs can go home and people will if needed be forced into the office etc etc.

I think there is a happy medium between being forced to put up with abusive, racist or homophobic behaviour and crying in the toilets at any mention of a deadline or presentation.

An aptitude test to see if they can do the job, or how much they can do in a set time, is one thing.

Deliberately setting an impossible task and then attempting to intimidate them over it to see how they react to their potential boss's apparent inability to understand the work they're setting is just fucked up. I wouldn’t insult anyone for choosing not to put up with that and once I found out that was your game, I wouldn't work for you either. I prefer working in places where they don't need to see how I react to apparent stupidity from authority.

I went to a different office and company yesterday to do some work as a contractor.

Very young crowd in there and not on massive wages by any means.

They were all very friendly, busy and motivated and, as far as I dealt with anyone, they had a good handle on things. Nicer office environment than I'm used to over the years.

They even seemed ok with something that I felt was a bit weird - the middle aged "boss" was not there, but he would come up on a big Zoom screen from time to time, which had a camera and mic on it. Bit Orwell for me, but maybe that's my age.

That's my very brief experience from yesterday.

A 69 year old ideally should not be in employment

Why not? I'm 68 semi retired last year and am going back to temp work in the New Year partly for the money and partly because I feel too young for full retirement.

I'm a boomer, my kids are a mixture of gen x and millennials, my GC are Z and Alpha. I find that characteristics appear in all those groups, the hard workers, the sensitive, the bright but lazy. I think it is personality rather than when they were born.

I’m Gen Z but born in 97 so and can actually see a bit of both sides.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the first two points. There’s nothing wrong with being interested in career progression. I also think there’s nothing wrong in not wanting to work extra hours - I personally really value my free time and won’t work more hours than I’m being paid for.

The other three - it just means they haven’t been raised well and are rude.

I agree it is a good thing to work contracted hours and take full breaks, but in any workplace from time to time there is a crisis, or a period where it's known well in advance it's going to be very busy. I always expected as an employee that at times like that I would need to pitch in and help. The flipside was that I got time off in lieu to compensate, if there was no provision for paid overtime.

Are people saying some employees would not stay late or come in early to assist at times like these?

Some employees never could - what if you couldn’t come in early or stay late due to childcare?

I can only do it now because I can work late from home in the evening if necessary - it wouldn’t have been possible for me before home working was made available because childcare finishes at a particular time. This isn’t a gen Z problem

Are people saying some employees would not stay late or come in early to assist at times like these?

So it would seem. Those employees are going to get a hell of a shock when unemployment rates rise - the current prediction is the highest rate since 1974 next year or the year after.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

There have been many jobs whereby I’ve been expected to stay under those circumstances but then the favour is not returned with time off in lieu. That’s becoming quite the norm particularly in the public sector so I am all for these younger ones standing firm with their contracted hours. Too many piss taking employers I am afraid.

Well good thing we have the boomers, with their hardy WW2 mindset and Blitz spirit to see us through isn’t it 😉

No, I see that, and that wouldn't be reasonable. Once I had children I specifically looked for part-time work clost to home where there was flexibility around starting and finishing times, and generous annual leave, but not everyone has that luxury. In those circumstances, I was happy to be flexible on my side too, but I wouldn't have been if it hadn't been reciprocated.

If employers refuse to give TOIL or pay overtime, employees are perfectly within their rights to stick strictly to their terms and conditions.