Bedgood Marketing

“Gen Z employees have *no idea* how to communicate.”

“Gen Z employees can’t pay attention in meetings.”

“Gen Z employees don’t want to work hard.”

These are complaints we hear all the time. Everyone recognizes that there’s a huge gap between Gen Z young adults in the workforce and Millennials, Gen X, and Boomer employees.

There’s no easy fix to a generation-wide struggle like this, but there are many things you as the business leader can do to help these employees overcome their issues with communication.

Like everything when you’re the business leader, the solution starts with you.

Empathy

It’s easy to complain. It’s much harder to dig in and get to the root of the problem.

It does no good to blame, roll our eyes, and throw up your hands. Successful business leaders see problems and work to fix them. No other situation in your business do you just chalk up to being someone else’s fault.

So what can you do? It starts with empathy.

Ask the Right Questions

Have you ever considered why Gen Z might struggle with communication?

Have you sat down with your younger employees to have an honest, open conversation about the best ways they receive and give information?

Create space for honesty in your work place. Take employees out to lunch or coffee and ask them questions. Tell them you’re just trying to learn about their backgrounds and understand what makes them tick. You could even have some prepared questions that relate to communications.

Questions like:

How often do you call someone on the phone?

What’s harder, a one-on-one conversation or presentation?

Did you ever have to do group projects in school? What were those like?

Also, while we’re here, what the heck is a labubu?

Ok, you don’t have to ask the last one. But seriously, if you know the answer let me know.

Why They Struggle

What you might find out from talking to your younger employees is that Gen Z kids were raised unlike any generation before them. So many factors outside their control made their childhoods and college years different and challenging. In many ways it prepared them for the modern world and the future of work. But in many others it set them back.

Gen Z kids were raised with smartphones and social media, thrust into their hands at 10 years old with no understanding of the lasting damage this might do. Their attention spans were obliterated into tiny bits while their brains were still forming.

Many of them spent incredibly important years of high school or college taking classes over Zoom, losing vital social experiences. And now they’re entering a workforce in the throes of an AI revolution that promises to take every boring, repetitive task off their plates (tasks, like manual data entry, that used to allow young employees to keep our heads down and learn the ropes while providing value).

None of these factors were their choice.

Their Superpower

It should be no surprise that Gen Z employees lack certain social skills. Older generations have spent tons of time and money training to learn new tech skills that are innate for Gen Z. We take it for granted that a Gen Z employee can use AI to work efficiently.

Yet these innate tech skills make nearly every Gen Z employee a super valuable resource in the changing tech world. They have an incredible amount to teach other generations about how to adapt to new technology quickly. They’ve grown up doing this without even thinking about it.

As a business leader you probably don’t even think twice about investing in training programs so your employees can master a new software you’ve spend hundreds of thousands investing in.

Yet, for some reason, many business leaders don’t consider making the same investment to fill in the soft skill gaps of their younger employees. People are a far bigger investment than any software.

Hungry for Success

Here’s another thing I know about many in Gen Z: they’re dying for people to believe in them and build them up. They’ve heard plenty about what they do wrong, but not enough about what they can achieve and become if they put in the work. They are hungry for success.

Instead of complaining about Gen Z, invest in them. They’re the future of your company whether you like it or not.

One way to invest is to provide communication training in the workplace. I’ve got a simple, easy-to-use framework that helps everyone improve their presentation, speaking, and interpersonal communication abilities. Hit my DMs to learn more about how a team training day can help break down barriers in your workforce. Here’s a teaser video showcasing a recent team training I did in Chattanooga, TN.

If you want to learn more about bringing this team training to your team, fill out the contact form below.