Managing Gen Z

[Amy8]

I’m an experienced senior manager who took some time out to work as a consultant – partly to avoid exactly these kinds of situations!

Something happened last week that’s made me question my management style, which I’ve always thought was fair. The CEO asked me (quite urgently) to get something done. I was in a meeting, so I asked a junior team member to help out. It would’ve been easier to just do it myself, but I genuinely needed the support.

He replied that he needed to check with his line manager first because it wasn’t in his work plan (I manage his manager), and then added that he was logging off shortly for a long weekend which had been pre-agreed.

I stayed polite on Teams and explained that sometimes we have to be reactive to senior requests — but honestly, inside I was thinking, just do it! At his age, I’d have just cracked on.

It’s not the first time I’ve had this kind of pushback — others in the team (same age group) have also been quite firm about working from home and not wanting to come in when asked.

I’m genuinely wondering: is this just how the workplace is now — a generational shift and new boundaries — or is it a bit of a disregard for authority and should I be adapting better ?

This is interesting- I’m late Gen X and remember having this same gripe as OP but about millennials!

I wonder if it’s an age thing? And we all have collective amnesia about our lack of commitment to work?

that said, it would need to be pretty serious to cancel someone’s leave, so I think he’s right to push back.

i do remember as a young professional it being expected that you’d drop all plans for work. But I wish I’d pushed back more myself !

Yes some seem lazy and expect to walk into a high level job rather than starting from the bottom and putting in the hard work.

Put yourself in their shoes

@Tryingtokeepgoing

Errr what? What kind of witchcraft is this?? Empathy?

I wouldn’t describe a medical emergency as power tripping frankly.

The point is the OP is accountable for the department decisions, not the junior. All he has to do is flag up the reason he has changed tasks when he leaves his handover information before going on his long weekend.

I’d also be interested to know why the manager hasn’t left a deputy or senior for the junior to report to or escalate to in the event of a problem and why someone already noted as having some issues has no supervisory support during the manager’s absence.

The OP isn’t a random manager trying to escalate their own work whilst another manager is away they are the person where the buck stops dealing with an emergency.

Anyone working on a team where emergencies arise needs to be willing to be flexible and switch tasks when one of those emergencies comes in. Otherwise they need to find a job which is entirely predictable 9-5.

I hope so because if not, it is scary to think of how many people just have no comprehension of facts at all. Too many sound like selfish, entitled brats, to be honest. They just want to bloviate about how everyone else but themselves should be at a job.

If these aren't NK/Russ/Chinese bots and agitators then the citizenry themselves are seeking the destruction and that's a scary thought.

I don’t think you were being unreasonable OP. I’m Gen X .

By the time he gave his reasons not to he could have done the small task. I’d feel like you do on this one, unless there is a back story here.

You are his bosses boss and his boss was away so he could have been more helpful, you were asking for a small task not a big chunk of his time…

You are very naive or very, very out of touch with how most of the corporate world operates.

Time & time again, fantastic employees do put in the hard work. They go above & beyond, they stay behind to finish things properly. They're co-operative and flexible.

But do you know where that gets most people?

Nowhere.

In fact, not only does it not result in any benefits, it frequently results in more stress and more work. That is then the norm for that employee, and instead of cutting those employees some slack when they happen to make a mistake, or when they say 'no', it makes their managers even angrier, entitled and demanding than they would be for someone who's an average worker.

In fact, being seen as a hard worker will actually result in some managers viewing those hardworkers as useful nerds - useful people which can be exploited but who won't be rewarded.

I've witnessed a few people do all the right things, go above & beyond regularly, and it didn't result in any promotions for them. The people who did get promoted were people who sucked up and who were personally valuable to their managers (but no so good or valuable as to outshine them).

A lot of Gen Z have wisened up to this and are very wary of being exploited, especially today where their wage won't get very far and many will never be able to afford a house.

If you work in the NHS there is nothing more important than patient safety, regardless of your role, what plans you may have, what you think is fair or not, it really is a matter of life and death.

OP, I think the very badminded posters😁 above have hit the nail on the head.

Was he he actually at home working?
Was he actually on his laptop working?
Can the network department verify he was actually working.

I think he took off early and wasn't available to work.

So serious. Cheeky fxxker if he was snd to then give you attitude.

I would be finding out the above and taking firm disciplinary action if he wasn't at his desk.

That’s the fault of a dysfunctional or poorly managed organisation though, not the fault of poor muggins at the bottom of the chain for having boundaries.

But that's not what you said. You related YOUR story to the OPs. YOU said, "I get requests like this a lot". I guess YOU didn't know the difference.

I'm shocked--NOT!

Yes thanks I know how work works. I also know how to speak to my peers and colleagues and I'm well respected in my field and have a niche job which involve hundreds of millions of pounds every day of the week.

I also know how to interact with colleagues and how to work as a team. Of course there is always a boss however my manager, nor me nor my CEO bark orders. There are ways to explain importance, communicate and ask.

The OP has a bee in her bonnet that the employee didn't jump to it but at no point asked if they were available for an urgent task. They are then annoyed they had to do it themselves. However if the wrong decision was made as a result of them leaving the room then they should have re-examined it. It also begs the question about higher level competency if the wrong decision was made by her seniors!

That might explain it you know. If my line manager wasn't in but his manager asked me to do a quick 15 min task, that wouldn't affect my leaving work time, which meant logging into a system that was part of my job - no way would I push back to her.

If I genuinely couldn't do it because I was doing something else and it was urgent I'd at least be proactive and ask my colleagues if anyone had capacity and direct her to them.

Yes, there may be times where management take the piss and you're being pulled every which way for things outside your remit and in your own time. This was not one of those times.

And doing the task yourself meant you found out he wasn't doing something properly! Yep, chances are he'd already clocked off so it wasn't that he wouldn't do the task, it was that he couldn't, so had to come up with some BS excuses.

Is this the first time you had a one on one job task for him to do?

This scenario is another reason why in-office work is better. I doubt he was doing anything at home but packing and getting ready.

Also challenging is if you do have to speak to an employee about poor attitude / work standards / performance /time keeping, they are very likely not turn in the next day, stating work place stress!

Yes I mean - he’s resourceful I’ll give him that , just exhausted by it all I think and maybe I’m projecting too much on one individual, but he did make life hard on Friday - however , I did pull it back. I’ll need to address responsibly with my team and his manager Monday .

As a manager, I'd never force someone to stay late for an unplanned task, unless it's an business-critical emergency. It's generally a sign of bad planning if this is happening. If meetings or chats with my team run on after 5pm, I always check whether they are happy to continue or want to reschedule.

He sounds more professional than you. He is following workplace protocols while you are making it up as you go along. I predict that if you keep this up he will eventually be promoted and will one day be your manager.

Yes to be fair it was

Me too. I know I wasn’t there to see what happened first-hand, but it sounds to me like he dealt with the situation pretty professionally and reasonably. He balanced his needs - and those of his manager - with yours in a polite way.

Also, I don’t think the situation you’ve described is a Gen Z-specific thing. I don’t see why it’s relevant to mention Gen Z in your post at all.

Surely, if his workload was full on till log off time, he should have confirmed whether "urgent task from OP" takes priority over XYZ tasks because he won't be able to all before end of the day.

So either, he needs some training on how to handle changing priorities.

Or, more likely, he was away from his computer, just keeping Teams running to look like he was online.

Keeping a green available blob on is the oldest trick in the book from when any remote working, working from different offices, sites etc became thing....

Do you not understand how threads and conversations work?

lol He’s welcome to it , he may have to go back to uni and get a medical degree however

I’ve been around a long time and it was drilled into me from the start that our role as non clinical managers was to make sure the clinicians could do theirs. I get the frustration.
of course it would help if the govt respected our jobs as needed and valid, but that’s another thread for another day.

Fair play to him!