When Generations Collide

Just 3 years ago, in discussions within the IMA India CHRO Forum, complaints about Gen Z employees were both common and inescapable. Generation Z, commonly categorised as those born between 1996 and 2010, seemed to be a black box. To many HR leaders, their motivations were a mystery, their work ethic questionable and loyalty suspect. Getting results out of them was a challenge that had even the most experienced executives throwing their hands up.

With millions of Gen Zs coming into the workforce since then, some of that unfamiliarity has gone away. As this cohort moves beyond its first jobs and into positions of greater responsibility, senior leaders are starting to see that they need not become sociologists to understand how to manage a once-seemingly-mysterious generation. Instead of asking age-old questions around work ethic, patience or loyalty, CHROs should focus on which expectations and behaviours distinguish younger employees, why this create frictions with existing management practices and how organisations should respond without lowering the bar on performance.

Our conversations with senior HR leaders across sectors explored the differences that appear most consistently, and what they mean for managers struggling to lead a workforce whose assumptions about work are changing.

. Mismatched Expectations Three key differences come through repeatedly in our interviews. CHROs highlight the frequency with which Gen Z employees seek feedback and inquire about career progression. They note that younger workers often question decisions, show little or no deference to hierarchy and are less accepting of processes that seem unnecessarily slow, cumbersome or disconnected from concrete outcomes. Older workplace norms often rely on employees accepting a degree of ambiguity, hierarchy and even confrontation as part of the deal, which is a tougher pill for Gen Zs to swallow.

. Expecting clarity sooner

What some write off as impatience in Gen Z workers, may, in fact, be a desire for clarity. According to the CHRO of a wealth management company , younger employees want to ‘see the path up front’ in terms of what they need to do to reach a goal, what the organisation can offer them and whether they are on the right track, through periodic feedback. She observed that they ‘look for recognition of the contribution they've made’, rather than recognition based on tenure. Staying with an organisation for longer does not, by itself, carry the same weight as it once did. What matters is their contribution and the value it demonstrates, after which they expect recognition, growth and progression to follow relatively quickly.

. Questioning the status quo

The HR head of an e-Commerce giant says titles alone no longer command respect. Younger employees want to see expertise and are comfortable questioning decisions, even if they come from someone more ‘senior’. This willingness to question authority can also show up in how younger employees set boundaries. Another HR leader notes that younger employees are more comfortable setting boundaries. Where her own generation might have felt guilty and offered a long explanation, she says, Gen Z is more likely to say, 'this does not work for me' and leave it at that. An agro-chemical company executive sees a similar lack of hesitation when employees raise concerns. She says Gen Z expects quicker responses, greater transparency and does not hesitate to escalate issues to senior leaders instead of moving through traditional channels.

. Challenging work methods

While entry-level roles have traditionally entailed a degree of routine work, Gen Zs appear too impatient to spend prolonged periods doing repetitive transactional tasks before asking for more substantive responsibilities. Younger employees are more likely to ask how the task contributes to the larger picture and to see mundane work as an ineffective use of their ‘intellectual space’. The wealth management CHRO describes a stronger urgency among them to quickly get to ‘thinking, cerebral work’. Similarly, a veteran BFSI industry leader observes that Gen Z employees are quicker to learn and absorb information and can become frustrated when their supervisors are unable to match that pace. Once they feel that their work has plateaued or become repetitive, they tend to look for ways to change it, or even to hand the repetitive parts over to AI.

The same impatience can extend to how work gets done. The HR head of a large multinational bank describes younger employees questioning restrictions around workplace tools they habitually use outside the organisation. From their perspective, using available software to simplify and shorten processes is a no-brainer. However, from the organisation’s perspective, the restrictions may stem from legitimate regulatory or cybersecurity requirements.

. Navigating the Difference The organisations we interviewed have navigated these differences by making relatively simple changes in how managers work with younger employees. They check in with them earlier, define expectations clearly and spend more time understanding what is driving a reaction before deciding how to respond.

Make expectations explicit

The E-commerce executive emphasises the importance of expectation setting. Most campus recruits at his company spend 6 months interning before receiving a full-time offer, allowing them to experience the organisation’s culture and working model first-hand. Similarly, a different large e-Commerce retailer ensures the hiring process makes the demands of its operating model clear. The business runs around the clock, employees may occasionally need to work beyond normal hours and flexibility is possible – provided responsibilities are met and communicated in advance. Its CHRO finds that Gen Z employees aren’t as rigid about their work-life balance boundaries when the demands of the role are made clear upfront. This approach reduces the gap between what an employee thinks they are signing up for and the organisation’s actual requirements. Clear expectations make flexibility easier on both sides.

Adapt the manager

Several CHROs argue that adjustments must also happen on the management side. The agro-chemical company HR-head says leaders can carry a ‘generational filter’, assuming that the behaviours that helped them succeed should work for younger employees too. In her view, managers need ‘situational leadership’ and have to adapt their leadership style to the people they are working with. Her organisation has tried to put that into practice by giving managers greater transparency around decisions and encouraging more conversation with younger employees about why things are done in a particular way.

Aaron Dsouza of Dr Reddy’s Nestlé Health Science says managers need to ‘flex their style’ depending on the individual. At Manipal Hospitals , conversations with employees during their first 6 months help identify dissatisfaction early, including concerns around managers, stretched hours and the work environment. The aim is to intervene before those frustrations become reasons to leave.

A similar adaptability is needed when it comes to performance and expectations. The HR head of a global professional services firm says employees are not required to clock in or out, or even account for a fixed number of hours. The expectation is that the work gets done, whether someone takes 2 hours or 10n to deliver it, is less important than the outcome.

Coach without lowering the bar

Adapting management does not mean lowering performance standards. A representative from a global consulting firm says younger employees can struggle with the resilience required for difficult assignments and may hesitate to take on work where they are unsure of the outcome. She sees a need for more intensive coaching when younger employees encounter difficult work, particularly where they become anxious before an assignment has even begun. Her response is to lend them support in taking the first step, and to then work through the difficulties, rather than allowing the initial reaction to determine whether they take it on.

This need not mean shielding employees from difficult work. The leader of the people function at the consulting giant, is clear on the fact that the performance bar at her organisation has not been lowered for younger workers. Managers cannot and should not, she says, be expected to remove every source of discomfort. Instead, they should actively help employees distinguish between something that genuinely does not work for them and something they have not yet tried hard enough to handle.

. The Management Question Flexibility begets flexibility. When organisations give employees room to exercise judgement, they often find the benefits flow both ways. Younger employees who are protective of their work-life balance are willing to work beyond them when urgently required to. Managers who are prepared to hear why a process is not working can find an army of younger, digitally-native employees eager to help redesign workflows instead of resisting them. This also holds true for participation and engagement. When employees feel that their views are taken seriously, that someone cares about how they work and that they have some say in how work gets done, the relationship changes.

Some of these concerns are perennial, but the Gen Z debate has brought them to the forefront. It is forcing organisations to reexamine long-standing practices that exist solely due to familiarity and not necessity. This is not to say that all Gen Z expectations are reasonable, or that the wheel needs to be entirely reinvented. However, the starting point for conversation with Gen Z employees has changed. Instead of asking how to make a generation conform to the workplace, organisations can ask what they need to be explicit about, what they can afford to change, and where giving people greater agency might actually make the organisation work better.