Business
Hierachy Is Out! How Should We Manage A Gen Z Workforce?
Global Banking & Finance Review®
Company
Managing Gen Z requires new strategies as they challenge traditional hierarchies. Focus on quality engagement and adapt to their unique perspectives.
By Sam White, founder and CEO of Freedom Service Group in the UK and Stella Insurance in Australia
Sam White, Founder and CEO, Freedom Service Group
I was out to dinner with some friends over Christmas, and an interesting debate broke out that made me think about the topic of managing the Gen Z workforce (or really anyone born after 1990 from my perspective). My two friends who joined my partner and I that night, were both considerably younger than me and had chosen very different careers. One is quite a successful musician and songwriter, and the other is a sometimes-working actor, who’s currently doing theater in London. The actor was explaining that he had just been fired from his sales job (one that supplements his income as the acting gig can be unreliable). He was seemingly pretty outraged that he was fired. Now, I have to say that my partner, who is normally a very laid back and gentle person, can occasionally have pretty strong views around these topics as she had made a successful career in running sales teams. So I braced myself when she gave him the steely look I’ve come to recognise myself, and said, “Well did you hit your sales targets?” He looked a little perplexed at the question, and then answered “Well no. But I added value in different ways.” She responded “But you were hired to do a specific sales job, and you didn’t make any sales! How could you have expected a different outcome?” And I guess this summed up some of the challenges I find myself having, as I have founded a company with over 160 staff and over half of which are under the age of thirty.
I have to confess – I myself am slightly torn on the issue of the rights and wrongs of workplace culture in this vastly changing organisational landscape. On the one hand I’ve always hated authority from a very young age. I was, in fact, kicked out of Sunday school for asking the Christian organisers way too many inappropriate questions (their words not mine). I’ve spoken out often in the insurance industry about how dysfunctional the current hierarchical management structure is. But I also have a business to run and people do need to be productive, in addition to being accountable for the parts they play within that business. So how on earth do you begin to manage a generation who at times can seem completely unmanageable?!
Back to my friends’ perspective – I wanted to understand more about why he thought it wasn’t fair that he was fired from his sales job for not making any sales. Whilst he couldn’t really justify the lack of sales, he did make a point about another one of his targets which was focussed on social media engagement. His boss wanted very specific increases in followers, likes and users of the platform and my friend completely disagreed with that form of targeting. My friend believed that his boss was completely missing the big picture in terms of the types of engagement that he was encouraging. Whilst his boss wanted volume “likes” and “follows”, my friend wanted quality social engagement that could be easily converted into sales.
It’s often easier to bury our head in the sand than face the problem
This made me think about another conversation I had recently with a media company. They told me that virtually ALL spend companies allocate to media is currently targeted at the over 40s. That seemed strange to me, so I asked why. He said that the under 40s, and even more so the under 30s, just don’t respond to advertising in the same way. They ignore or switch off, and their attention span is so short there is barely time to serve them an advert. I said that someone must have found a solution to this or otherwise the whole media industry would surely be under threat. He said it is very much under threat…“but for now we are just doubling down on the over forties.”
I think there are many businesses doing the same with their workforce. I have a lot of fellow business owners as friends and the conversation often comes up about how difficult it is to manage millennials and younger. The phrase “snowflake” is often banded about and the frustration around how to motivate this generation is palpable.
Are we keeping up with the values of the modern world?
I guess this isn’t a new thing. Growing up, I remember my dad frequently uttering the phrase “no one owed me a living”. I still believe this to be very true – people believing the contrary, is probably my biggest hot button. I’ve always been fiercely independent and, after a pretty dysfunctional childhood, I was determined to always be able to take care of myself. But I was a child of the 80s, brought up in the Maggie Thatcher and Wall Street era that believed greed was good and that growth was the only metric of success.
What I see at the moment is that we have a whole financial system built on the idea that we must continue to grow in order to have success. But we have a planet of finite resources and we have a new generation that doesn’t buy into this rhetoric but that still has to survive within the systems that currently exist.
The old guard (myself included) are still navigating in the old system, but now also must accommodate the new wave that’s coming through. If the new generation of workforce no longer buy into the desire to keep growing and consuming, how on earth do you motivate them to work in businesses that are based on this principle?
Everyone on the team needs to feel that they can take a shot at goal
For me, I try to think of the people within my organisation, including myself, as a sports team – it takes every member engaged and with eyes set on a common goal to achieve victories. We also need to consider ourselves equals when it comes to the expression of ideas that will allow us to reach those goals. For many years now I’ve operated “you said we did” sessions where various people from all levels of the business can get in a room with the Board and tell us exactly what’s working and what’s not working. We then report back to them on what we did to tackle the issues they raised so that everyone is accountable.
However, this in itself is not enough if your people are not empowered to make the changes themselves. The other big area of development for my business has been the introduction of high-performance teams. These are randomly selected members of your organisation, and without assigning specific leaders, are given a business problem to solve collectively and are enabled with the power to implement the solution.
We need to have open conversations to redefine metrics of success
I think that with the Gen Z workforce, the old concept of hierarchy is completely rejected. They want to be heard and respected, but for me they also need to appreciate the concept of reciprocity – why would I continue to pay you if I’m not getting what I need back from you? And this is the challenge we should be addressing openly.
For my business, we introduced timebank days for staff so that they can spend time on charities or social enterprise that perhaps motivate them more than selling more insurance policies. In Stella (my female-centric car insurance brand in Australia), we give $5 in every policy sold to WAGEC, a charity that helps victims of domestic violence. We chose to do this because it was a cause that was incredibly close to many of the employees’ hearts. The exchange for this though, is they have to help the business sell more insurance policies, so hopefully the more the business grows the more we are able to do good collectively.
I’m not convinced that many of the old KPI’s that businesses use to define success, revenue, EBIT, customer numbers, etc. will be the same metrics used to evaluate them in the future. But I would like to have conversations with the next generation about what they should be. I think there is a way to engage this generation and also find sustainable solutions for the future.
Don’t get me wrong, change is never easy – but if we stick our head in the sand and blame things on generational differences rather than move with the times, we risk dysfunctional teams, losing out on talent and ultimately failing the business. So it’s clearly well worth the effort!
The article discusses strategies for managing a Gen Z workforce and the challenges they present to traditional workplace hierarchies.
Gen Z often challenges traditional hierarchies and has different expectations for workplace engagement and productivity.
Businesses should focus on quality engagement, adapt to Gen Z's unique perspectives, and rethink traditional management structures.
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