We have to stop working like it’s 1999
When I started my career in an ad agency in the mid-’90s, the environment was surprisingly similar to what’s portrayed in the drama Mad Men. While the typewriters were being replaced by word processors and phone calls came directly to our desks, we were reporting to the office every day, huddling up by the water cooler, and making sure we looked busy when management walked by. Decisions were made in meetings, and important information was stored in the file cabinets.
Work culture was also startlingly the same. Yes, we—Gen X—benefited from the efforts of our predecessors to reform sexist, racist, and unsafe work environments. But our awareness as to how well these reforms were working was largely limited to our own experience. Meanwhile, the longstanding social contract between employers and employees was intact. Employers provide a paycheck, and employees feel grateful and loyal to their organizations. Case closed.
The generations behind us have a remarkable advantage: social media. The unspoken rules demanding we protect our organization’s reputation and keep our salaries a secret have been demolished. Now, in a few clicks, you can see unfiltered reviews of the work experience and pay scales at thousands of companies. And, since employees are no longer constrained by geographic boundaries, they have more choices than ever.
The extensive research into what Millennials and Gen Z want at work has revealed the following requirements:
- Work that is meaningful and aligned with their values
- The opportunity to learn, grow, and advance (quickly!)
- Flexibility and a clear boundary between work and life
- Managers who proactively support and develop them
- Compensation that accounts for the high cost of housing
Gen Z has exactly zero tolerance for the status quo that Gen X experienced. They are not willing to be absorbed into the corporate machinery because they fundamentally don’t trust it. Nor should they. Many, if not most, organizations are clinging to the “good old days,” assuming that they still have the upper hand and treating employees as infinitely replaceable.
Take, for example, the imperious post-COVID return-to-work mandates. While there is mounting evidence that hybrid work is at least as or more productive than fully in-office, a significant number of big brands are enforcing RTO. The CEOs of these organizations, including places like Amazon, AT&T, and JP Morgan, have “put their foot down” about flexible work. Ironically, their organizations are now expending a lot of energy taking attendance rather than focusing on their core work.
It’s neither easy nor comfortable when things change in ways you neither expected nor like (take it from a woman whose first telephone was a rotary dial), but it’s also reality. If you want to attract and retain top talent, you have to create work environments that enable them to thrive. You can either wait for it to be a talent crisis or start reconsidering your work environment now.
Start by asking yourself a few questions:
- If I were 25, would I want to work for my organization?
- What about it supports me as a person?
- What about it supports me as a professional?
- Will I be able to do my best work here and be rewarded for it?
- Is it clear how I’ll be able to advance?
- Will I be able to succeed while still maintaining a healthy boundary between work and my personal life?
- What “nonsense” might I encounter that makes my job harder than it needs to be, e.g., meeting madness, document scavenger hunts, etc.?
If you don’t like the results of your self-examination, it’s time to throw away the old playbook and management models and start over. Incremental change is not sufficient to get you where Gen Z demands that you be.