Incentivizing the Young: Beyond Salary Expectations
Certainly, GenZ has caught a lot of flack on the job market, and not all of it has to do with them being young. With salary success defined in some cases with absurd and lofty expectations (close to $600K a year to achieve “financial success”), compared with Millennials who view the number as closer to $180,000. Perhaps this points directly at the maturity gap—assertions from the C-suite that “26 is the new 18”, but it could also point to a pessimism about the lengths required to be successful in the modern market. Research shows that the top title for GenZ is “founder”, with 66.6% of the 18-35 age group working at least one side gig (or planning to). The side gig? Certainly seeming more necessary as their expectations of salary fall $30,000 of the average Gen Z post-graduation job market. This also connects to complaints about a 9-5 only workforce disinterested in their job: in an economy where their 9-5 may dissolve at any time, they are de-prioritizing those work places in place of self-care, but also the pursuit of multiple sources of income. What other generations see as lazy disinterest may in fact be astute perceptions of the economy, and their forays into the work force may be teaching them lessons that their supervisors don’t realize they’re teaching.
We see something similar in ant colonies and beehives: some workers will intentionally work in different ways that don’t create the highest short-term productivity. Their reasoning? During periods of crisis, they exist as reserves for the rest of the colony and step in when the rest of the system collapses. Without them, a period of burnout turns into a disaster.
In a recent podcast by the Harvard Business Review, Tim Elmore (author of The Future Begins with Z; Nine Strategies to Lead Generation Z as they Disrupt the Workplace), speaks about the myriad ways in which GenZ behavior and workplace dispositions are reactive to the world they see around them: they aren’t leaving at 5pm to laze around, but to care for an increasing number of aging Boomer and GenX parents, or more likely, to go to a second job. Their impatience and “arrogance” within the workplace come from an upbringing that is skeptical of systems some have called “disillusionomics,” a generation adjusting to an ever-changing (and often unknown) financial future. Elmore directly calls out this arrogance as “leadership sandpaper”: that is, GenZ have no patience for bureaucratic systems, inefficiencies, or bad personalities among their managers. So what does Elmore recommend?
Using Onboarding as a Career Launchpoint. Take the time to get to know what the employee wants, both long term and short term. Introduce them to potential mentors, and consider that you might be building a future valuable asset for your company, rather than simply discovering a disposable “commodity.”
Take the Time to Find the Why. Previous generations may be more okay with hierarchy and bureaucracy (or at least pretended to be), but GenZ are decidedly curious about processes and systems, and may be able to bring new ideas to the table. What may be seen as audacity might actually be an opportunity to update concepts like value and mission for a modern market and economy. When it comes to their expectations of sudden success or skyrocketing salaries, it is important to explain why proper training and experience take time, and that in many ways this process is unskippable.
Listen First. This is especially true when it comes to reprimands and course corrections. Guidance and training can only come once supervisors have earned the trust first by asking, rather than simply asserting fault. The thought process needs to be understood before proper coaching can happen (even if this process takes longer). Elmore quotes John Wooden: “The more you know, the harder it is to listen.” First appear as a person by asking how they are doing and seeing them as a person before seeing them as a worker.
Seek to Make Work Enjoyable Again. Elmore speaks about the dichotomy of work versus play: we pay workers to work, not to enjoy the experience. He believes this may be an incorrect notion. People are passionate about their hobbies, and care more about outcomes. If young people believe in the larger vision or the mission of the company, and develop strong relationships with their co-workers, the company benefits. As Elmore says: “Everyone is more important than their job. No one is more important than the mission.”
Desire to be part of a complex working system is how bees determine their appetite: foragers gather not based on their personal hunger needs, but those of their entire colony. Whereas solitary insects operate based on only their own metabolic and motivational systems, social signals act directly on appetite circuits in individual bees, turning a bee’s food-seeking behavior towards the larger cause of colony nutritional needs.
One major concern for GenZ is an expectation that the companies they work for will take positions on social issues and climate change. Seeing employers who are willing to invest in GenZ workers as future “currencies” (as Elmore calls them) may involve directly seeking to tackle the most complicated problems of our time. It is up to modern leadership to determine for themselves how they can retain this new crop of potentially market-changing workers, and what they will do to prove their commitment to these important causes.
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