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.

You never get tired of this sniping, do you? Unlike the rest of us.

Unlike Blossom, here to put the boot in gen Z. Yet tantrums whenever anyone says anything about her age group. Just giving certain posters a taste of their own medicine. If this thread had been about any older generation it would’ve been zapped long ago. Looks like gen Z aren’t as sensitive as they’re made out to be here…

I think I've been lucky, I've had various jobs but two long terms one, 20 year typically, and with both I would stay late, come in early, work weekends if needed and with both they had no issue if I needed to leave urgently, say child had an accident at school, or needed time off at short notice, child needing an op and getting a call to say they had a cancellation. One job was public sector one private.

It is a pity that isn't the norm regardless of the generation involved. Obviously not everyone can stay 2 or 3 hours late with no notice if they have other commitments and I think that is accepted.

Where were your kids when you were working late/weekends? Especially when they were little?

You are wrong about threads being pulled if they are critical of boomers. There are some pretty vile threads including how we are living too long and suggesting it's time for euthanasia.

I don't think we should be lumping whole generations together.

It’s the sense of entitlement. Using phones in meetings. Taking themselves for two hour lunches. Hungover Fridays every week ( granted I will have been guilty of this is my 20s but I’m on 40s now and I can’t remember being that pathetic ). Putting everything on instagram stories .

On a journey to NYC a couple behind us were all over each other, kissing, laughing, was lovely but equally wanted to say ‘we know you’re into each other’, on way back they were also on plane. Our seats were very back row so staff had their stuff in overhead space, which obvs is fine and expected. They said there was room further down , put it in there (my hand luggage’, which I did. The chap arrived, his seat was under this space, he stood there asking with a raised voice ‘who’s put there bag here? Who’s bag is this?’ Looking at everyone and waiting for the challenge, I answered saying it’s mine, I was told to put it there! Think my tone made him shut up, he sat down and the couple didn’t speak on the way back also , people are weird !

With their other parent or if it was planned I might arrange childcare, I aso swapped with other parents I was friendly with so I could phone and ask if they could have my kids till their dad got home. I worked for the police and would run the admin side of major incident rooms so if there was a murder, child abducted or something else serious, I might do a week of working 12 hr days for 7 days. It was the nature of the job.

I'm a millenial, slap bang in the middle of the age range. Had an analog childhood and remember the "pre Internet times" etc.

In my previous workplace we recruited a lot of gen z. In my new workplace, not so much for some reason. However, as a manager I noticed some general trends and themes with our new recruits. The same thoughts were shared with other managers ranging from younger millenial to older gen x.

-Very quick and keen to produce work in relation to a set task, but work was rushed, littered with errors and obviously not cross checked with any SOPs or procedures (work in an industry where this is very important).

-Training schemes which worked previously for new starters no longer seemed to work, despite being refined and updated regularly by our QA team. Eagerness to seem like they understand and not ask for clarification when unsure seemed to be a key issue.

-Very lax approach to start and end times. This was not pre agreed or part of the company culture (nature of work required set times to be covered). This issue and reason for set times had to be raised and explained repeatedly, but seemed to fall on deaf ears.

-Not wanting to do parts of their role and then claiming they didn't have enough training when they attempted to do these less favourable tasks. They had the same training (and infact more) compared to previous recruits.

-Role hopping every 6 to 9 months and openess about searching for new roles and even openly discussing about playing off offers against each other. Despite some soul searching about our company and culture, it became plain that some of them were just very very keen to try and short cut their way into senior positions, with some even saying they were primarily driven to earn as much money as possible.

Not all were like this, but just some general trends we witnessed. Made things quite exhausting and difficult from a management and operational perspective in a small company.

Really? Or is it a conversation about quality of life in later years generally? Because I’ve not seen ‘boomers should be euthanised’, and I can’t imagine anyone here would be okay with that.

How old were your kids when you started that job? Asking a mate to take a toddler for the day is a big ask.

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

Are you... quite all right? Boomers were born in the post-ww2 baby boom, hence were not even in the womb during ww2 or the blitz.

I know but WW2 seems to be all they ever talk about! You’d think they were there…

Well I know what I read, maybe you didn't read the same threads.

My youngest at the time was just 3. I didn't ask a mate to take a toddler for the day, I was talking about someone picking them up from after school club or nursery till dad got home.

Within a few houses were families with children similar ages to mine, we'd help each other out so for example I used to have two kids on a Saturday as the mother worked at the weekend, my husband worked late one night a week so the mum would pick my kids up that day until I got home.

Are you generalising from one specific person you know, or are you perhaps falling for the Daily Mail's weird WW2 fixation and thinking it reflects how people actually think? You seem to have an unrealistic view of boomers. Those of us born in the late 1950s/early 1960s are generally not fixated on the war as we had no experience of it and most people who did experience it didn't talk about it much when we were growing up.

No you’re not. You’re totally obsessed with boomers. And I’m far from alone in noticing that you never miss a chance.

Did any boomers mention WWII or was it just @Cuppasoupmonster?

Have a guess @ancientgran.

I have to confess I don't think I've read every post so it would have to be a guess.

bringing your whole self to work No, no, no. Never do this - bring your professional self to work, leave your whole self at home, nobody's interested in it.

bringing your whole self to work No, no, no. Never do this - bring your professional self to work, leave your whole self at home, nobody's interested in it.
I'm inclined to agree with this.

There's nothing wrong with having a professional self that is friendly and gets the job done.

Now you mention it, I'm wondering if the whole bring your whole self to work outlook is why an increasing number of trainees and new staff seem to think professional constructive feedback is personal criticism. If you can't separate the personal from the professional then everything must feel awfully emotional and dramatic.

So true. As a manager, I am not interested in the whole self. Whole self tends to bring with it a whole bunch of management issues.

I agree with this but the management teams putting this stuff out there in places I have worked in the past aren’t made up of 20yos - more like 40-50yos

So raise it higher up with whoever in senior management thinks it’s a good ethos for your workplace.

You think you’re “too nice” on a thread bitching about people. I don’t know them, maybe they are a mess but I think maybe you need a little more self-awareness before you come for others.

I thought the Bank of England’s (which is admittedly not great at forecasting…) latest forecast was a peak of 6.4% in 2025, which ‘only’ takes us back to 2014 levels of unemployment? It was much higher than that in the years immediately post financial crisis (‘08). Unemployment was pretty low in the ‘70s wasn’t it?