What if Gen Z has it right?

I’ve been asking business leaders for one word to describe Gen Z at work. These are the words they use most often:

😡 Angry

👑 Entitled

💎 Precious

❄️ Snowflakes

💰 Expectant

(They also say some positive things: confident, misunderstood, driven, balanced, healthy…but the tilt is towards the skeptical).

Yet what context are they operating in? Just this week we have had:

• Facebook’s “low-performance layoffs” (check out Kaila pushing back against being branded low performance in what sounds like a chaotic workplace).

• DOGE’s chaos and 5 bullet email drama.

• Reports of people moving house to comply with RTO mandates and then being laid off.

Maybe our take should be VERY different:

🗑️ Gen Z is reading the room, the employee-employer contract is being trashed, and protecting themselves is the only sensible response.

🛗 The lack of dignity with which people are being treated (dignity is a big theme for me in this) won’t end until senior leaders really understand how their normal employees live.

🎧 If we want to tackle disengagement and low productivity, we have to behave very differently in our businesses.

Is it going to take a new generation to bring humanity and decency back into work?

Christine

PS. If you want to see my panto-costume you will have to get to the end of the vlog, please don’t call the police.