Starting a career has increasingly felt like a right of passage for Gen Z and Millennial workers struggling to adapt to the working week and stand out to their new bosses.
But it looks like those bosses aren’t doing much in return to help their young staffers adjust to corporate life, and it could be having major effects on their company’s output.
Research by the London School of Economics and Protiviti found that friction in the workplace was causing a worrying productivity chasm between bosses and their employees, and it was by far the worst for Gen Z and Millennial workers.
The survey of nearly 1,500 U.K. and U.S. office workers found that a quarter of employees self-reported low productivity in the workplace. More than a third of Gen Z employees reported low productivity, while 30% of Millennials described themselves as unproductive.
To summarize a long story, I (a millennial) put in a task request to a Gen Xer, including step by step instructions. I knew what to do, I just don’t have access to do it.
Xer told me that was the wrong service, it’s this other one, he can’t find the settings in the Other Service. We went back and forth a few times, he repeated I was wrong, until finally he showed me a screen capture from Other Service that showed “managed by service 1” that proved I was right in the first place.
If he were willingly to accept I might know what I’m talking about and looked at the instructions, it would have been done in minutes instead of dragging it out over 11 days.
Obviously this is a hand picked anecdote, but yeah, bosses and non- boss elders definitely get in the way of productivity.
I can’t make total generalizations about a generation but I’ve got a high schooler, and it’s amazing to me how their assignments are spoon fed to them. Every assignment is posted on Google classroom, the syllabi the teachers create are amazingly comprehensive, writing assignments are broken up into multiple milestones with separate deliveries for research, thesis, draft, etc. Then the grading rubric has very detailed instructions about how the assignment will be graded with hyperlinks to examples. Then the assignment is due at midnight the day after the last class session.
It’s no surprise to me that a kid would expect work to function the same way. What is so often missed is that the person assigning the task doesn’t know how to complete the task or what the process should be. We hire someone to help us figure it out.
So… Workplaces should do a better job of providing detail instructions? Cause I sure as shit could of used better instructions doing something the first time when I was getting out of high school.
If it’s a repeatable task, then yes. Documentation and good p&p are important. But sometimes a task requires creative problem solving skills and you need to learn to develop them somewhere. Other times it requires asking questions of someone who knows. In a small company if the instructions don’t exist then you should create them as you learn to help the person who replaces you.
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I think that’s a fair comment. I just got off a call with a vendor that has policies that don’t seem to be up to date. I asked them about them and the manager in question said she’ll ask her employees why they are doing something a certain way and it’s because a prior manager told them to do it that way 15 years ago. We used to call that tribal or anecdotal knowledge. It’s always an ineffective middle manager who can’t get out of their own way and “throws bodies” at a problem. I’m guessing if you get busy then your team gets burnt out. I’m not always convinced the higher ups are using technology well either.
Personally, I started a business that serves other companies. I’ve noticed that many potential clients want only a couple seat licenses for our software so they can keep the knowledge to themselves. I won’t sell these companies less than a dozen seats (small sales teams mostly) because I know the employee down the line needs the tool the most to be productive.
Well that creative problem solving is going to come from experience, I just don’t like making sweeping generalizations of ones capabilities due to a lack of exposure. Too many times people in leadership positions either don’t want to teach or forget/take for granted what it was like to be new at something.
Honestly it depends on the job and your education or training. If you’re hired out of college as a consultant or an auditor then you’d better pick up quick. There’s a difference between bad training and being unwilling to be flexible. My initial comment was more about how a high school prepares you differently than before. I don’t think the content is different, if anything more advanced, but it seems like the system is created to accommodate only the most passive participant. Sometimes we have to step outside our comfort zone, but now I have one kid who thinks it’s rude to call someone without texting them to warn them first and another who refuses to confirm homework assignments with a friend if they are not posted to Google classroom. That is certainly a generational difference and not the result of bad training from an employer.
Well I think you’re starting to wander from the topic at hand but I think we can at the very least both agree that better documentation could be helpful getting into something new out of high school.
Call me crazy but the fact that no matter how hard a millennial or gen z person works: they still lack job security, most of their wages go in bills/rent, they often act as a carer in some capacity, and are generally not doing work related to their studies might also have something to do with it…
Most of my career is showing how we could solve problems, being told not to because the morons above me don’t comprehend abstract, being thrown under the bus, finding ways to do what is needed anyways, and only after the fact, after proof is shown that it was the correct thing to do, getting some meager acknowledgement that perhaps I was right amd know what I’m doing.
But it still never causes these idiots to actually trust me the next time. It doesn’t seem to matter who is above me. If they are even slightly older than me, they don’t ever trust people like me.
I see this same thing happen to a lot of my peers my age and younger as well. The high quality individuals suffer because the world is full of idiotic managers.
Quite probably managers have ended up where to they are at due to the Peter Principle:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
They might have been great at their jobs at some point, and kept getting promoted until they couldn’t succeed any more.
This principle helps explain why any hierarchy will eventually be shit.
That happens all the time. But usually they don’t really want to give up the task that they were good at and end up a micromanager. Good management is hiring capable employees and clearing the deck so they can do their best with a minimum of BS and stress.
The survey of nearly 1,500 U.K. and U.S. office workers found that a quarter of employees self-reported low productivity in the workplace. More than a third of Gen Z employees reported low productivity, while 30% of millennials described themselves as unproductive.
“In a given week I maybe do fifteen minutes of real, actual work” - Peter Gibbons, 1999
All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.
I’m Gen X, and I recall similar complaints about us from the Silent and Boomer generation employees as we were coming up. So, it just seems like more of the same, with the added benefit of more awareness of what’s happening.
This has always been the case. Socrates talking about children “The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
I don’t know about gen z, but it’s probably a similar story. Millennials are better behaved, better educated, more intelligent had less teen pregnancy and less violent crime than any recorded generation before them. The kids these days aren’t getting worse, the seem to be getting better.
Millennials are also more productive, especially productive relative to inflation adjusted cost. Productivity has been rising and real wages have been stagnant. Millennials make up the most productive part of the workforce right know. The prior generation are retiring and the younger are still junior/eduction.
Coming up? I’m Millennial, and 43.
It’s just news shitting on a group and not realising who they are.
If you’re born in January 1981 then you’re basically Gen X and therefore, a boomer. I bet you remember the first Gulf War.
I’m hoping with the rise of the internet, millennials break the cycle for Gen Z. There’s a lot more awareness now and Gen Z are pretty alright
I’m a millennial and I straight up consider Gen z the same as us.
I hope this doesn’t offend anyone if we’re like considered boomer af, but I just see the same social views and the same issues. The generational divide feels dead post Internet.
I tried explaining this to my gen x dad, about my gen x brother and I’d views, and dad got stuck on “but you guys are 10 years apart!” 😂
My sister and I are both Gen X, her late 60s and me late 70s. When she got her first digital camera, she took the memory card to CVS, got her prints made, and deleted the digital files to take new photos. It’s funny that people think these generation labels are actually meaningful blocs instead of a useful statistical tool for policy makers.
Millennials finally realized that working for soulless corporations is a necessary evil for many of them and shouldn’t rule their lives. Then they passed that news on to Gen Z. The Boomers who thought they had to put their entire lives into working 40 hours a week for shit wages in order to increase shareholder profits don’t get it, especially when they were able to do things like buy houses on their salaries.
Yeah man my boomer dad gets a fucking pension! Blows my mind, except it doesn’t because he was in a great union. I actually remember being on vacation once when they were doing contract negotiations and my dad calling his buddy each night to see if there was news. Kind of put a damper on the vacation but he only has that pension because he was in a union who was willing to strike.
What my boomer dad doesn’t get is that so much of corporate enterprise, like even the thing they are ideally making or doing in the world, not just the working conditions or profit sharing, is not unquestionably good for us. He’s an engineer from a time when it looked like technology would save the world. My zoomer kid feels conflicted just starting a hobby thinking of the consumption and waste it requires. If they could believe the companies they work for shared their values I think it would go a long way, but i don’t see that happening very quickly.
If they believed that these companies shared their values, they would be believing in a lie. The sad truth is that corporate america doesn’t share their values, nor their ethics.
Our options are to either submit and slave away to capitalistic greed, or find alternative sources of income.
I like the first half but reaching an agreement with your employer for your labor doesn’t have to be slavery, there is a balance that can be struck
Idealistically, yes that would be great. Very few will ever achieve that though.
Nobody ever mentions Gen X in these articles/posts, I wonder why?
Gen X
Its a silent X
And then came the mass layoffs, and everybody that came after that knew that long term loyalty was gone. Long term promises and careers didn’t mean anything.
Then the budget for raises dried up suddenly, and the only way to get more wage was to change company. Any short term loyalty was gone, and putting in the hours for something that wouldn’t come by the end of the year is now considered foolish. A career was a sequence of hops.
These are the kids that grew up seeing how this works and what it did to their parents. Now companies are shocked these kids don’t want to play the same game.
Gen x: “we got ours but we didn’t know the truth until it was too late.”
Speak for yourself but I’m Gen X and I’m gonna need to work till I die. No retirement unless you count hospice
Story of our generation.
Smallest generation bookended by two massive cohorts and yet we are expected to pay the brunt for everything because we are the “adults” as our parents get older and need care and our kids and grandkids need support.
All we want is to put our heads down, do our work and check out when it’s all done. All everyone else does is bitch about eachother.
FML.
I fucking feel this in my DNA dude. Well said.
Many Gen x were able to get while the getting was good. Cheap housing, cheap education, benefits, and a fat inheritance.
Obviously it didn’t apply to everyone.
I think these last few years of geriatric rule is just going to be a lesson of what not to do for when we take control.
By the time these fucking boomers retire we’ll be geriatric too :(
But with the lessons learned from a lifetime of hardship, perhaps we stand a chance of not continuing the cycle. We lived the struggle, the grind, the hustle. It’s just up to us to not inflict it in turn.
“We’ll be different” - Every generation ever.
These people do realize that boomers used to be the hippies, right?
Most people weren’t hippies. They were called counterculture for a reason.
The cool ones died or retired. What we have left are the cowards, hall monitors and people so boring that even though they can afford to retire they wouldn’t know what to do with themselves so they keep working, keep being in charge, keep shitting up everything.
The cool ones died or retired
That’s not true - a lot of them were also killed or incarcerated by the government through programs similar to Cointelpro. Especially those boomers who were people of color and were active in the Civil Rights Movement
A good sign that this is what’s gonna happen is if you look around our generation is the first generation that is trying to work with the next ones to do better which has never been the case before. There is a reason millennials and gen Z are always in the headlines together.
Millennial here. An old one at that. I’m proud of my generation and even more so of gen z. We got your back.
What I mean is that by the time it’s our turn to lead the best decision will be that we’re too old and we should let zoomers run the show lol
It will never be “our” turn to lead. Power isn’t based on age, it’s based on wealth.
The next generation of billionaires is no different from the last.
If they promise with their actions to stay woke, tolerant to all but the intolerant and respecting towards the planet i don’t care who rules the world.
I think (most) millenials and gen z are in pretty good agreement with what policies we want for the future, though. So I’m not that worried.
Research by economists should not be trusted in matters of employee well-being.
I’ve been laid off 5 times since I started what was my career over a decade ago. After the second time I learned to always keep a second or third source of income, which meant I never had a day off or a vacation for years. After the 4th time I gave up on corporate jobs but still took a position when a friend offered it to me. This time I will not go back, thankfully my side work of being a handy person landed me a job in the solar industry somehow and the pay is even better than my senior position at the last “career” job.
Cool. What are you doing in solar?
New sun.
Honestly just the basic installer, I travel, which is paid for and put panels up and run wire on commercial sites. I also do residential installs but those pay less, but fill time between the commerical jobs.
right of passage
…
“They’re like, ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10:30 a.m,’” Foster said of her younger colleagues in an interview with The Guardian.
Every single generation has thought this about the younger generation. Every single one.
In this case, I think the whole issue is exacerbated by the fact that giving sincere effort at work is so clearly a mug’s game. It used to be that being disciplined about showing up and doing your job was difficult, but at least there was a reason to do it and develop the skill over time. Now? Unless you have some sort of unusual job where the management gives a shit about you, why would you?
Hard work gets rewarded with addition work. Im half assing for my own sanity. If I was paid enough to be comfortable things could be different.
I’m in the highest paying workplace for my field in the country and it’s still not worth putting in any extra effort.
Capital just fundamentally doesn’t understand that monetary incentive has an inverse relationship with performance and that you can’t hire 9 Women to have a baby in 1 month.
I was late to work last Friday, intentionally, because my cat fell asleep in my lap while I was eating breakfast. That moment meant more to me than making sure I was there in time, no matter what it may have impacted. Working to live, not living to work, is the rallying cry upper management needs to come to terms with.
Every single generation has thought this about the younger generation. Every single one.
I think you’re right. My guess is that as companies get greedier and work offers fewer and fewer benefits, people are less and less willing to work as hard as their parents did. Employers that don’t understand this are either genuinely ignorant or just pretending to be ignorant.
I spent a over a year trying to get a promotion while an ex boss who’s team I left was secretly sandbagging me.
I got an offer elsewhere and suddenly leadership asked “what number would keep you”. That was exciting until they followed up that raises and promos were frozen so I’d have to wait indefinitely.
I left.
I did exactly the same thing early in my career.
- Yo I’m underpaid, can I have more money?
- No
- Yo I found another job, I’m leaving, here’s my notice
- Oh shit, what if we gave you more money?
- Definitely not, good luck tho
That happened to me many moons ago.
“Hey so I’ve been here a few years and I’ve learned a lot more and I’m much more productive in my role. I’ve also learned the business enough that I’ve applied the skills I brought with me to the point that that’s now less than 10% of my workload, having become so efficient with it that you haven’t had to fill the other opening you had for my role because I’m handling it all. What do you think my prospects would be for a raise or promotion?”
“Sorry, no budget for a raise this year beyond your 1.3% annual raise (in a year with 4% inflation). And sorry but we can’t promote you either. You don’t have the skills for the position above yours, and besides, if we promote you out of your role we’ll be too under staffed in it.”
“So hire someone, let me train them for my role while you train me for the role I could promote to?”
“Nah that’s too expensive and we wouldn’t likely get the performance from them that we get out of you. Great job by the way. But no, no promotion, no raise.”
“Do you think that might change next year? Or like…where do you see my role here in the future?”
“We’re really happy with the roles you’re in and feel you’re well suited to it. And we feel that your pay is in line with the work you’re doing, so just keep up the good work.”
…so they basically told me that they’d keep overworking me and that I could expect to never get a significant raise or promotion ever again.
Two months later I got a job offer doing less work, work that was much more in line with my skills and preferred work…and a 38% raise. When I gave my notice, immediately they wanted to make a counter offer. I said I’d hear them out but based on our last conversation I doubted they were going to be willing to retain me…but sure I’ll listen.
Their offer:
No raise.
I could work a shift of mandatory 9 hour days to make more money (OT was always unlimited and freely available so this was literally just taking away my choice to work OT and forcing me into it).
No promotion.
But they would also start training me to assist another guy in the office with his work. Basically I could work longer hours and have more responsibilities for the same pay.
…and they were surprised when I refused.
They even had the gall to tell me how they felt betrayed that I only gave them 2 weeks notice, rather than agreeing to stay on until they could find my replacement and I could train them. When I pointed out that they literally told me they weren’t hiring my replacement as long as I stayed their only response was that they would have if they knew I was going to leave.
All I need them to understand is to pay me a fair wage and don’t fucking talk to me on my days off and just let me do my job.
Yes, but also some fucking healthcare so I can get medication for ADD is necessary. I felt like a horrible human being for twenty five years for having a terrible work ethic. And then I went on meds and suddenly I’m productive and motivated. Made me realize I’m not a shitstain on the drawers of humanity, just someone who needs help regulating brain chemistry and is capable of great things when I get that help.
That gives me great empathy when people are crying about laziness. I suppose some folks are lazy, but I wonder how many of them wouldn’t be if they could get help.
I’m actually off meds right now for various reasons (job change and related insurance fuckery) and I can’t wait to be able to resume them because I’m a tenth of the person I can and want to be.
Yeah same, and the whole song and dance with a shrink to get amph is just so disrespectful after everything
ITT:
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“I’m smarter than my boss that’s why I don’t care” “no you’re not, and yes you do.” “Yeah, actually, I am, and no, actually I don’t.” “‘Actually’ they don’t care, which is why you’re complaining about it. The only people that don’t care in this scenario are your boss and me.” “Nuh uh.” “Ya huh.”
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“This has happened before, it is always like this.” “No it’s not, we’re uniquely smart and capable and they’re particularly not and not.” “Ok, you’re brilliant but no one cares. That must be what’s happening.” “It is!” “It isn’t.”
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“The olds are so old and work culture is bad, we need better work culture.” “What does that look like?” “Doing things I care about when I want to and being paid a lucrative salary for it.” “That won’t work.” “Yes it will.” “Ok, but it won’t. Good luck.”
Sanded it down for you all. These threads were getting a little knotty and overgrown.
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The survey of nearly 1,500 U.K. and U.S. office workers found that a quarter of employees self-reported low productivity in the workplace. More than a third of Gen Z employees reported low productivity, while 30% of Millennials described themselves as unproductive.
Couldn’t this just mean gen x/boomers feel more productive? Doesn’t sound like it really speaks to the output of the employees
Millennials/Gen Z:
- Uses computer to finish day’s tasks in 4 hours, browses internet for remaining 4.
- “Wow, I feel like a useless piece of shit.”
Boomers/Gen X:
- Spends 2 hours reading every single email in full as if they are addressed specifically to them, getting angry that people are telling them useless information. Spends an hour printing & collating papers for the day’s tasks. Spends 5 hours doing the tasks because paper is less efficient. Stays 1 hour extra for scanning/data entry when the whole thing could have been done on the computer in the first place.
- “Gee golly, I sure am swamped.”
Definitely.
I suspect many genx/boomers don’t feel productive either - BS jobs don’t discriminate - but they have probably seen enough layoffs to know when they need to appear busy - when a reporter asks is one of those times…
I’m easily fooled into productivity with a median wage that adjusts with inflation and quantified growth goals.
Boomers would have expected their wages to go up above inflation. Not settle for keeping in line with it.
Starting a career has increasingly felt like a right of passage for Gen Z and Millennial workers struggling to adapt to the working week and stand out to their new bosses.
What the hell does this even mean. How is starting a career considered a “rite of passage” when the average American works 50-60 hours a week between 2 or more jobs? A career in a single field is straight up considered as unattainable as buying a house is by Millennials (46% of whom own a house, compared to the average of 65% for other generations). Plus Millennials have been in the workforce for multiple decades now. We’re in our 30s and 40s. And nobody has “struggled” to adapt to the work week since the 40 hour week was created after unions fought for the right to 2 days off a week. Children are indoctrinated to this cycle in kindergarten! And it’s a lie anyways with the modern culture of bosses demanding people be available to call during nights and weekends. The average corporate work week was closer to 47 hours even 10 years ago. Do they mean working at a single company for more than 3 years? Because that’s often a loss in pay compared to changing companies.
We’re off to a bad start before even hitting the paywall…
Unemployment might be relatively low, but the job market It’s kind of sucking for skilled labor.
Unskilled jobs don’t pay enough to get the “American dream” Even beginner skilled jobs aren’t footing the bills anymore.
Rent is through the roof, housing prices are immense. Food is inflated, wages are not. I’ve been working 60 hours as long as I can remember. It shouldn’t need to be that way. Especially not for young adults in the workforce now, thinking about starting a family.
As far as the beef with managers The consensus here is not wrong. I’m a Gen x manager and it’s honestly a fight. I’ve been doing the job for 30 years and probably for the first 20 of them shit didn’t really change All that much. There was a good way and a bad way to do x. I’m inclined to ask you to do x and tell you to make sure you do it the good way. What I don’t know is that 9 years ago someone went why the f*** is there a bad way to do x and they changed it now there’s no bad way, but I sound like an idiot grandpa telling you to watch out for something that’s no longer an issue.
Sure I try to do trench work as much as possible but I’ve got budgets, reviews, and planning meetings. The best I can do on an average day is to remember that I’m not an authority on everything anymore and rely on my team. Hey do x, I remember the last time I did x you had to make sure that y and z weren’t an issue, that might not be the case anymore so please do x and use your best discretion if Y and Z are still a thing make sure that they are covered. Hopefully they give me feedback on y and z or I’ll just be crazy grandpa again in another decade. Worst case, their best discretion was a wrong choice and they waste their time we all feel bad about it and the work has to be redone.
It’s this actually something that can meaningfully be said of Gen Z / millennials, or it’s just “young people”.
I ask because millennials are not just starting their careers, millennials are in their 30s and 40s. I’ve been in my career more than a decade and I’m a millennial.
I’m also less productive now than before because I have too much to meaningfully accomplish it all, so I say no to a bunch of work but still end up working on random things an executive asks for instead of deep focused work that could really push the company forward. But if you don’t do what an exec wants you get fucked.
Oh my god haha. So relatable. And then they complain about progress on your core tasks for which they hired you. Eh, whenever that happens I point out to them that it’s not in my job description and that I did them a favor. Shuts them up most of the times about the part where I was hired for.
