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 ?

OP is a manager, not a busy medic fitting another patient in on a Friday.

And don't you dare lecture someone about cancer patients, you have no idea what rhey may have been through themselves.

This thread is enlightening me as to why the UK’s productivity is stagnant. People are no longer willing to go the extra mile.

I have yet to meet a band 7 in the nhs who has a clue about management or leadership. People are promoted to such level more on their clinical skills being ok and the ability to answer the interview questions well. And ime they are then given no further training from a leadership perspective. Just left to get on with it, maybe that’s just my old trusts 🤷‍♀️. The nhs has such a culture of poor and toxic management that people inside don’t realise how bad it is. It’s all so normalised and they’ve seen nothing else. I got out 8 years ago and working for other organisations has been like a breath of fresh air. Learnt more and developed in the last 8 years than the previous 20.

If you read all the posts, the OP is indeed a medic making decisions in a multi-disciplinary team meeting about fitting in another patient.

Edited after RTFT! For a 15 minute task, I think your colleague was being unreasonable / petty. I’ll leave my original comment below, to share a cross-section of views more generally on workplace boundaries.

Original post:
I’m a millennial and agree with your Gen Z employee.

I am known at work for having boundaries whilst being hardworking. To be clear, I’ve worked plenty of evenings and weekends when needed.

But holiday in our team is always respected. A “long weekend” means he’s booked annual leave. He might have a plane to catch, or a long car journey. Even if he didn’t have any travel, pre-booked holiday should be respected.

Checking with his line manager is sensible if you work on different projects. My line manager works on totally separate matters to our team lead. So if I was working on an already urgent matter for my line manager and our team lead gave me a last minute request, I would need to flag that with my line manager to make sure I prioritised correctly / manage expectations.

To be honest, with a last minute work request shortly before clocking off for holiday, when he was presumably wrapping up other matters, he could have said no to your request. Is there anyone else in the team you could have delegated to?

I suspect he might have been doing what many of us do when going on leave and that's to clear the decks as much as possible so not having to hand tasks over to other team members.

I'm always busiest from 2-3 days before and up til leave as I clear anything which is due whilst I am on leave as well.

So, basically you think people should work beyond what they're actually paid for, in order to make companies look better?

That is an extremely authoritative management style, as I understand usually only appropriate in genuine emergency roles such as police operations or emergency medicine. If you use it in every day situations you will burn your team out.

I'm a head of service, the service comprises just over 100 people including middle managers, senior leadership, senior practitioners, practioners and a range of business support/admin staff. Huge range of ages including plenty of Gen Z.

I'm would not be happy to see my managers do this, it would never get the best out of my teams.

I note you say you left management before because of situations like this. This is going to sound really harsh but if I was your manager I would be thinking this was a bit of a you problem.

If you foster good relationships with your team, and ask nicely rather than demand, the staff member would be more likely to have done this.

And if he couldn't, because he was leaving soon, and nobody else could do this, you have a junior member of staff as a single point of failure in what sounds like a critical process.

If you worked for me, I would ask you to review this process as a matter of urgency. I would also be worried about staff morale and retention with your management style and would gently be encouraging you to take on some professional development around this.

Jeez, some of the responses on here. I'm glad I no longer have to manage people.

The OP is in medicine and an emergency had come in.

OP you are being extremely reasonable. His response was unacceptable in any setting let alone a medical one. Sometimes stuff happens and priorities have to change. He needs to learn flexibility.

Was it a medical emergency or a needing data emergency though?

I had missed that it was healthcare, that was shared in OPs 14th (!) post! Can't see where the fact it was an emergency is referred to.

However that makes it even more concerning that a junior member of staff is a single point of failure... What if he was off sick/on holiday/left and could not be immediately replaced?

When I say emergency medicine, I am talking about surgeons in theatre or paramedics dealing with an RTA. That doesn't sound like the situation here.

The situation of needing information about a patient is a very routine task and there needs to be a clearly mapped process for this. Not reliance on demanding instant compliance and foot stamping.

If it really was a life-or-death urgent emergency then this point by @CleverButScatty is even more crucial:

And if he couldn't, because he was leaving soon, and nobody else could do this, you have a junior member of staff as a single point of failure in what sounds like a critical process.

If the OP's emergency had happened 90 minutes later, the junior admin guy's attitude would be moot because he would have left. Neither he nor his line manager would be available. If this is a critical life-or-death situation then it can't be dependent on one junior admin guy.

The OP has said they were in a MDT meeting when a new emergency came in. Given the state of the NHS a new patient presumably means juggling the other cases and so data is needed.

Medical emergency equals data emergency.

@peoplegetreadyforthetrain Perhaps he’s just very green and needs someone to explain to him how the hierarchy works, I’d raise it with his line manager and ask them to explain to him.

If you work in a culture where hierarchy exists only to mark the importance (and relative unimportance) of people then perhaps; however if a hierarchical structure is there to promote efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability then the member of staff was absolutely right to check with his line manager. A team can’t run effectively if its members are expected to unquestioningly follow instruction from anyone more senior to them regardless of what the team priorities and expectations are.

I really hope OP will come and update the thread after talking to the junior's line manager, whose boss OP is.

I suspect the LM will end up being less than impressed with the junior....

The junior's LM was on AL, and the junior said, for a 15min task, which is part of his paid role, "I need to check in with my LM". Does this not smell like bs? There is no way he didn't know his LM was on AL and therefore unable to sanction doing this task.

So he picked a bad excuse for hiding he was skiving (as he was working remotely, he quite possibly was already travelling for his long weekend, just keeping Teams logged in on his phone to appear as if working...). He probably didn't realise OP knew his LM was on AL...

People in this thread banging on about boundaries etc are bonkers. This was a 15min task, part of role description, coming from boss's boss, so directly up the chain.

Indeed no wonder there is a productivity issue. If during your LM's annual leave, their boss isn't the correct authority to change task priorities, ask for work to be done etc, who is?

If the guy genuinely was swamped for the next two hours, he just should have asked in Teams which other task he can de-prioritize given the urgency of this request.

People on the thread have straight away jumped into expectations of over-time. Does the workforce have no flexibility to adapt to changing priorities and to confirm their understanding of asks?

So why was there a situation where the junior guy was leaving early when his manager was off?
What would have happened if he was off sick or had already left.

Either the urgency of the situation is being exaggerated, or this team's processes are dangerously flawed and putting patient safety at risk.

Here you go. The data was required to make decisions about an urgent case that came in mid meeting.

Then OP would have had to do it. But in the meantime junior data admin is meant to be there to do it

As a people pleasing millennial, I welcome Gen Z ripping up the rule book and setting a new precedent for handling ridiculous workplace requests out of their remit/ job description. When I started working it was frowned upon to leave at 5:30 on the dot, even though the pay was barely above minimum wage. Everyone felt they had to stay late or they would look like a slacker. People logged in at weekends, on holiday, and went above and beyond their job description. But it didn’t get you anywhere.

It’s a good thing people are sticking to their Ts and Cs and not letting workplaces take advantage of/ take the piss.

So the OP should have done it. Welcome to senior leadership OP.

This may be true but in this case, the task WAS part of his duties and during his normal working hours (even taking into account the agreed early finish of 4/430; I forget exactly which).

No, that’s not what I said is it.

Up to 4pm data analyst was working and should have done it.
After 4pm then OP would have had to do it as there was no cover.

Lack of cover needs considering but at the point OP asked for the data there was no need for her to get it unless data analyst was a muppet. Sadly it transpired he was.

I feel sorry for you, in my workplace people go out of their way to help in a situation like that. They would not have to check with their own manager, that seems odd.