As US job openings continue to reach historic highs, companies urgently need Gen Z workers. And according to a new study, the businesses that win them ó and keep them ó will be the companies that put a laser-like focus on understanding what matters most to them. The Conference Board report explores the most important motivations of Gen Z, a cohort that is expected to represent nearly a third of the workforce by 2025.
Based on interviews with more than 100 Gen Zers, they place the biggest premium on ÿve critical values: adequate compensation, control, safety and wellness, growth, and purpose. While these objectives are important to all generations of employees, for Gen Zers, they are imperatives.
The report also explores what makes Gen Z — those born in 1997 or later—a force to be reckoned with. Unlike previous generations, their comfort with evolving technology and using social media to amplify their concerns makes them unique. Also in°uencing their views, Gen Zers completed their education remotely and started their careers during especially turbulent times—the COVID-19 pandemic, extraordinary economic uncertainty, geopolitical turmoil, and deep societal unrest.
To best attract, engage, and retain Gen Zers, companies should:
1. Reevaluate starting salaries and increase pay transparency.
• Gen Zers readily share salary information with one another both via social media and in person.
• Gen Zers view adequate compensation as a matter of both respect and equity.
2. Give them as much exibility as possible over where and when they work.
• For knowledge workers, this can mean the opportunity to work remotely at least some of the time.
• For hourly workers, it can mean having some say in the shifts assigned to them and knowing their shifts well in advance so that they can plan for personal commitments.
3. Provide opportunities for development — both internal and external.
• In the wake of the Great Resignation, many Gen Zers noted that a lack of growth opportunities would be a reason to leave a job.
• Employees and managers should work together to create personalized career pathing plans and transparently discuss growth opportunities, both within the company and externally.
4. Establish how each job contributes toward career advancement and how roles and responsibilities will evolve in the future.
• Offer workers opportunities and resources to develop skills that are not only relevant to their desired career advancement but also support long-term employability in a shifting work landscape.
• Assign workers to projects that align with their professional interests and provide stretch
assignments.
• Encourage workers to take risks by creating a failure-tolerant culture: analyze failures and celebrate small successes.
• Employers should also create opportunities for workers to network with senior staff, shadow high-level projects, and tackle independent projects.
5. Develop a culture of safety and wellness that genuinely supports employees while on the job and respects their boundaries beyond the workplace.
• Gen Zers want their employers to help support their physical and psychological safety and their pursuit of mental and physical wellness.
• For workers in customer-facing roles, this can mean support when faced with customer hostility, which has increased significantly since the onset of the pandemic.
• Survey employees’ well-being to ascertain mental health wellness and seek feedback on established policies and benefits.
6. Ensure leaders are living the organization’s values in how they communicate with and treat employees.
• Organizational mission, values, and purpose are high priorities when choosing an employer for many Gen Zers, and many said they would leave a job if their employer’s values did not align with their own.
• Leaders and managers need to set expectations and help their employees understand the organizational impact and importance of the work they do.
• Allowing Gen Zers to take ownership of their tasks and giving them autonomy to make
decisions will also help them feel invested in the outcome of their work.
Learn more at conference-board.org.
