Engaging and Retaining the Gen Z Workforce

Engaging and Retaining the Gen Z Workforce

Host: Mervyn Dinnen

Guest: Danielle Farage, Gen Z Talent Strategist, Speaker, and Content Creator

In this podcast interview Mervyn talks with Danielle Farage, leading Gen Z and Future of Work writer, researcher and influencer. During the conversation they talk about changing generational attitudes to work and employment, importance of skill development and career personalisation, and how to really engage and retain the emerging workforce.

Topics discussed:

• Understanding the educational background of the Gen Z and the events that have shaped their thinking
• Tailoring work around skills and not specific job roles
• Personalisation of career options
• Offering support and enablement over management and direction
• Why do Gen Z leave jobs
• Preferred management styles
• The ‘right to disconnect’ and other ways to engage the Gen Z workforce

Thanks for listening! Remember to subscribe to all of the HR Happy Hour Media Network shows on your favorite podcast app!

Transcript follows:

Unknown Speaker 0:00
Music.

Mervyn Dinnen 0:17
Welcome to the HR Means Business podcast, which is part of the HR Happy Hour Network. I’m your host, Mervyn Dinnen. Now if you enter the words Gen Z or Generation Z into an online search, a number of words will come back to you. Not all of them necessarily complimentary. Not all employers are tolerating laid back language. Words like difficult in the workplace come up. If you do the search, and I have just done one, they’re demanding. They want culture change. I don’t think there’s ever been as much written about an emerging generation in the workforce as there is now. Certainly, if you go back through books on the history of work, I doubt you’ll find articles entitled How to Hire a hippie or why the punk rock generation will change your business forever. But in the digital era, Generation Z are up for under the microscope. Today, it’s a pleasure to be able to talk to a generation Z corporate talent consultant and expert who advises companies on how to attract and hire and retain Generation Z employees, and how also to encompass neurodivergent thinking into their business. Her name is Danielle Farage. She’s a Harvard Business Review and Forbes featured editor, a featured Future of Work specialist, and I’ve recently had a couple of video chats with her myself about different generational perspectives on the workplace. And I’m very happy to be bringing some of those conversations here to you today. Danielle, welcome to the HR Means Business podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Danielle Farage 1:46
Thank you so much for that wonderful intro. So as you mentioned, I am Danielle Farage. It’s how you remember it. And I am a Gen Z speaker and corporate talent strategist. I am super passionate about bringing the generational divide and and conquering it and just bridging gaps between generations in the workplace. But also beyond, I focus on upskilling across generations, fostering authentic connections and really empowering both Gen Z as well as older generations to grow and learn together for a more inclusive and equitable future. So that is what I what I do, what I love. And yeah, let’s get it rolling.

Mervyn Dinnen 2:31
Indeed. I should point out for UK listeners that Danielle is not related to a UK politician of the same name. She gets asked that whenever somebody from the UK all the time talking to her, um, so why do we need to understand the Gen Z workforce? I mean, nobody bothered to understand me when I first started working.

Danielle Farage 2:53
It’s a good question. It’s actually one that we talked about last week on purple acorn. But you know, I think one of the biggest considerations is the fact that we have five generations in the workforce. However, every single day was it day that 10,000 boomers are retiring from the workforce? Is it day or week?

Mervyn Dinnen 3:20
I doubt it’s day, so it’s probably week or month.

Danielle Farage 3:24
So with that consideration, right? We’re going through a huge brain drain of, you know, our current workforce, and at the same time, things are speeding up, right? Like companies are, obviously, we’re in a bit of a downturn right now, at least in the US, but, but companies are going to continue to grow, the workforce is going to shrink, and we’re going to need people to work. And it’s kind of as simple as that, right? It’s, it’s, it’s a matter of supply and demand. And if you’re not currently which they’re not, they’re not currently attracting the younger generation of workers and incentivizing them to stay, we’re going to have a bit of a problem down the road.

Mervyn Dinnen 4:14
Do you think this is a question of maybe style? So for example, a lot of the research I do around Gen Z is more it’s about tailoring work around this, the skills as opposed to a specific job role. Or is it because, I suppose you know the level of education you’re coming into the workforce with, and your expectations are very high. We’ve been through global health pandemic. We’ve been through, you know, there was a, without getting on to economics on this chat, obviously, you know, your the growing up was, was, was, you know, featured a global recession and things, do you think it’s those kind of factors, or is it just, it’s, you know, because of digitization and now. We’re well into that, that now is the time for a very different way of working and approach to working.

Danielle Farage 5:06
You know, it’s interesting. I think it’s kind of all of the above, right? It’s so you you have a generation that has grown up, right? I had a smartphone at the age of 12, and as did many of my peers. And so when you have a generation that’s grown up, you know, the most educated generation of all time, with the most incredible technology and the most advanced technology in the palm of their hands, where they can answer any question that they have, right, imagine if you grew up that way. So it’s important to have that consideration as we sort of think about this generation and their needs as they come into the workforce, and so as they do come in, they’re met with a lot of systems that are outdated, a lot of resistance to change, which, in my opinion, as Sophie Wade and I spoke yesterday on our new our new podcast, ask, sort of show is unprofessional. The definition of professionalism is, is really to keep keep yourself up to date with you know the most you know, the latest technology, etc, and so you have a generation that wants that, right, that wants that kind of environment, and is being met with a state of work that isn’t up to par with, I guess, their expectations, but also with their capabilities, with what they’re capable of.

Danielle Farage 6:42
This is a generation that wants to be challenged. It’s a generation that wants to be guided but not told what to do. It’s a generation that grew up with this individualistic desire but met with maybe some, um, helicopter parenting. And then as they graduate into the workforce, it’s, you know, a lot of and I was talking about this on a podcast the other day, a lot of this generation was sort of shielded from a lot of things growing up, and then they go into the workforce, and they’re not met with the same empathy and understanding as they might have been at home or in school, and they’re not exactly sure how to deal with it. And so there’s also this sort of emotional resilience that I don’t want to say is lacking, but it’s just, it’s not. No one really, you know, taught us how to navigate a lot of social situations at work, and we did graduate into a pandemic.

Mervyn Dinnen 7:52
Okay, so is the I suppose, from what I was saying before, is it more about these are the skills. This is what I can do. This is what I enjoy doing, and I want to get better at doing and I want to know how I can utilize these within your business or as opposed to actually, I really want to be an accountant. I really want to be a marketing person. Can you train me? Is it you know, for someone like you, you’re obviously very good at promoting yourself, at writing and speaking, being creative. So is it for you going into a company? I know that you’re on a kind of a solo career at the moment, but if you were to join a company, is it these are my skills, and how can I use them for you? Or is it I actually really want to run your marketing team? You know what?

Danielle Farage 8:36
Yeah. That’s a great question. So this is something I talk about a lot, which is that typically, the relationship between employer employee is you hire the employee to do the work for you, and that employee works for you, right? And when you graduated, right? We talked about this a few weeks ago. When you graduated, it was lifelong employment, or it was, you know, 3040, years at a company, and that’s a long time, but now it’s a very different state of work, and it’s much more of a two way street. It’s much more of a, you know, what can you do for me as an employer, and what can I do for you? But for that exchange to be equal, you know, to in certain ways. And it’s reflected it’s very interesting because I’ve grown up in terms of my career in the future of work in the HR tech industry. My first job was at a recruitment at AI startup. And it’s interesting to see the progression and evolution of the types of questions and the types of the type of rapport that happens in an interview process. It’s fascinating, right? So when I graduated, or when I was intern, when I was interviewing. For internships, it was much more, hey, can you tell me about our company? What do we do exactly right? Like I would literally be asked, right and then, versus today, it’s much more, tell me about walk me through your resume, and you have to tell a story about yourself and maybe why you’re a good fit for the company. It’s much more about, you know, what are your What are your expectations going into this job? What do you want to learn, right? As opposed to what, what are you excited to work on for us, right? And so I really, I appreciate that. I admire that. And I think that a lot of this generation is really looking for that kind of relationship with their employers, where it is about, hey, I have these skills. I’m upskilling all the time because I know that it’s important. How can I leverage these skills and continue to grow within your business, but also be guided along the way to become an expert in these skills, because realistically, we know that we’re gonna have seven different careers in our lifetimes. And so of course, we’re kind of scared. Can I swear on this podcast?

Mervyn Dinnen 11:16
No, you can’t. You can’t.

Danielle Farage 11:18
Okay, we’re scared.

Mervyn Dinnen 11:21
I know what you mean, so it’s almost like, I suppose, a personalization of career options, right? As opposed to a, you know, one size fits all. I’m an accountant, and that’s what I’ll always do. It’s kind of, and this, I think, plays into very much, you know, current, you know, skills based hiring and things like that, where the but it’s enabling people to, I suppose, create a career which might take in many different strands, and you might do many different things during that. I mean, I work primarily in kind of marketing and stuff now, whereas I was originally an accountant, and then I worked in sales, and so I suppose it’s it has happened before, but now it’s as opposed to me being a bit of an outlier compared to friends of mine I was at school with who pretty much work for one company, or they work in lives. Now the norm is that that won’t really happen. The one of the things I talk about is this shift from what I call management and direction to support in enablement, in that, that historically we, you know that managers within businesses have been very structured about it. You know, we manage people. We performance manage we we direct people wherever, every, every, every department’s got a director of this, a manager of that, but this kind of support and enablement give me access to the knowledge I need to know, give me access to the skills, knowledge that I need to learn and I’ll do it. Do you feel this very much that you know the way people are managed and led is the expectations are very different with your generation?

Danielle Farage 13:01
Definitely, I think. And there’s a lot of variability in that, in terms of the what we’re met with, right, and the management that we’re met with. I have close friends who have a great example for you. One of them went into banking and finance, and they ended up getting a promotion a year early. And when you go into finance, obviously you have sort of a class of people that you start with, and got a lot of backlash from many of the people in her in her cohort. And once she did that, about eight months later, her boss came to her, and he said, Hey, you know, you should apply to work at, you know, a hedge fund on the on the buy side and and maybe you should, you know, get some interviews. Set up an interview for her, and then ended up being like, all right, I’m not going to tell you if I think that you should take it or not, because she got the offer, and it’s at a top, top firm and ended up, you know, sort of saying to her, you know, maybe you shouldn’t take it once she actually did take it. And I thought that was just such an interesting, an interesting example, because here, here’s someone who you know is championing and pouring into this girl, and then, kind of like, conf like, and then enabling them to go off and do their own thing, but then pulling back and being like, oh, no, no, you should really Stay. And I think that’s where this person went wrong, right? Like you’re I think that the the manager of the future is one that wants their team members to succeed, however that looks. And obviously it sucks to train a new person. It totally does. But the. More that you try to hold on to someone and maybe limit them from going further and doing bigger things, the more they’re going to want to leave, right, and the more they’re going to feel that. But I do think in terms of the type of management that she was able to get from him for that, you know, two years, it was really incredible, you know, it’s not hand holding, its guidance and support, yeah, and championing and, you know, and also pushing her to go after new opportunities within the organization.

Mervyn Dinnen 15:41
It kind of leads us nicely onto what was going to ask you next, which is very much wider Gen Z leave jobs. But just before that, because it’s hot topic here at the moment, we had an election. Not that long ago, we’ve had a change of government. I know you’ve got one coming up soon. You may or may not have a change of government. But one of the things that the incoming government is talking about is bringing in some kind of right to disconnect, so that you know that, depending on your role and job, obviously you know your business, your your managers or whatever, can’t contact you outside of books, we don’t, yeah. I mean, our workplace legislation possibly isn’t on top of, you know, the all of digitization and so it’s technically, yeah. I mean, when I started work, I left work at 536 on a Friday. You know, none of my managers or anything could get hold of me until I turned up at 930 the following Monday. But obviously, yeah, now they can, you know, now they can message me all weekend if they want. So, I mean, is this, is this something very important to would you say Gen Z, or is it something they expect, because they are 24/7/365, connected, and therefore they they one of the things they accept when they go into a job is this might happen, right?

Danielle Farage 17:06
It definitely depends on the industry and depends on the job that you’re working, right? Because if you go into finance, you should expect a lot of the time to work weekends and to work really late hours. And I’m not saying that I agree with that. I actually really don’t. There are people that you know are the pro hustling movement, and they say in your 20s, you should be working 24/7 and you should be doing whatever you need to do to get you know ahead. But this generation is very much against that, you know, and I think that that’s reflected in a lot of these trends that you’re seeing emerge on Tiktok the last few years, right? The quiet quitting.

Mervyn Dinnen 17:50
They have quiet vacationing now or something, or it’s something else vacationing, isn’t it?

Danielle Farage 17:55
Yeah, it’s funny, because it was in an article the other week about, you know, millennials doing quiet vacationing. I think that Gen Z would just take vacation between you and me. They would just kind of do it because, you know, that’s that really is what they stand for, right? They stand for the separation like, and I’m not saying this, you know, on the whole, it’s not all of Gen Z, but a lot of them do stand for this separation between work and life. I’m not one of those people, but a lot of my friends in it, and we’re having conversations about this constantly, are saying, Oh, well, maybe my passion doesn’t have to be, you know what I do, and maybe I can find that outside of work. And oh yeah, definitely, I’m going to take all the days of vacation that I have and that, you know, I have offered to me, and I’m going to go to Europe with my friends, and I’m going to, like, live my life. And I think that, you know, being having worked in a French startup for a few years, it definitely rubbed off on me. I said to myself, you know, I I’m never going to work for a company that limits the number of days I can take off to, like, less than 15. I mean, that’s just, it’s just crazy. It’s, it’s actually crazy and, and I don’t think that we’re meant to be in also that state of fight or flight, like we like we are constantly and I’m a very big proponent, as is a lot of my generation of this sort of can mind, body connection and being in touch with how you’re feeling. And we’re all about, you know, mental health. A lot of us have problems with mental health. And I think that there is this movement that is arising around, you know, the sober curious, and, you know, we’re drinking less, we’re carving out time to be off social media and be disconnected. A lot of us are buying, you know, non smartphones, and so there is this sort of resurgence of the desire to disconnect. And I don’t think that there could be anything better for us. To be honest, given that we’re so connected all the time, like you said, and I think that should extend into the workplace as well. Why the heck not?

Mervyn Dinnen 20:11
I think it will become, I don’t know about law, but I think it will become some form of directive over here. So we’re talking also, you know, we’ve covered that a bit about why? Why Gen Z might leave jobs, I suppose, in terms of preferred style of management or learning. Again, this is something which you’re used to learning pretty much on the job as you go with a lot of things that the approach to education was quite different, probably from previous generations, which was very much about memorizing things and kind of memorizing dates and facts, as opposed to applying knowledge to do something more creative. What would you say? I mean, to anybody listening to this who kind of is struggling as a manager with a predominantly younger team. What kind of advice would you give in terms of management and learning styles?

Danielle Farage 21:06
Definitely, it’s a great question. You know, one of the most effective strategies for me, and given that, you know, I’ll take a step back for a minute, one of the biggest reasons why Gen Z leaves their jobs is because of a lack of learning and development opportunities and growth within a company, and that can take many forms. I’ll share just two of them. One of them is you’re not let’s say you’re a Gen Z, or you arrive at an organization you’re not exactly sure where your career and trajectory lives within that organization, right? You can’t clearly see a path to growth, and that’s the case for a lot of my friends. And that explains, you know, the this, the sort of job hopping. I don’t like that term at all, because job hopping implies that you’re being unintentional about, you know, your decision making. And realistically, that’s just not the case. For a lot of Gen Zers. We tend to overthink, actually. And so, you know, I think that’s a that’s one of the bigger problems is, is like not being able to see the alignment with a company and in terms of your your growth, and so I would say more companies should be taking a look at what does the internal talent development track really look like? What is the, what is the user journey, right? Like we would say in product look like. And from the second, you know, they, they might come into the company as an early, early career, but really, any, any point. So that’s one. The second one is, you know, how am I, how? How am I as a manager, creating a space where that’s psychologically safe for there to be consistent feedback and bi directional feedback at that.

Danielle Farage 23:05
And so one of my favorite tactics that really worked on me when I was working at a company was that the moment I sort of entered into the organization, my manager had me sit down and write a list of goals, like bigger goals, not like small goals, right? Like big goals within the organization, how I wanted to learn and grow and develop internally. And, you know, sat down with me to go through those goals, then say, All right, here’s how we’re going to do this. Here’s what you need to do. Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll make this intro for you. I’ll like, you know, we’ll sign you up for this course, etc, etc. And then three months later, we checked in, how are we doing on these goals? Have we progressed? Have they changed? And then six months later, you know, you have that check in, and you know, it’s, it’s such an easy thing to do. It’s, it’s such a positive thing to do. And at the same time. You know the the bi directional feedback comes in at these sort of monthly check ins that I would I would also have with at a different company, with a with a boss of mine that was really more about, how can I help you? How can I enable you to work better? What, what’s what’s going what’s going on in your work and personal life that might be interfering or helping or, you know, how can we enhance your work life? And so those are some of the tactics that that, you know, I’ve shared and will continue to share with organizations.

Mervyn Dinnen 24:35
I suppose we’re reaching the end, so I want to go back to the beginning, really something we didn’t discuss as my, I suppose, final question to you is about how, how to engage Gen Z in terms of attracting, you know, the hiring process and that kind of initial, you know, we, we talk a lot in the HR world about, you know, employers. Engagement, and I write about it a lot, and every time there’s some new data and research out. In fact, you and I are one of our chats couple of weeks ago, we’re looking at some some data on, you know, why Gen Z leave jobs? It’s because it’s, you know, they want interesting work, and because they don’t feel they’re being challenged and things. So what, you know, what’s employee engagement for Gen Z?

Danielle Farage 25:19
Well, how long do we have? It’s kind of a loaded question, but I would say, you know, this generation is has grown up with personalization, right? I have a phone, like I said, a smartphone in my hand at age of 12, and so we’re used to that, right? And I think that’s the the key thing about Gen Z is, really to understand their values, that what motivates them, why you know they they might want certain things and and being able to communicate transparently with them about what the expectations you know might where the expectations might be too high, you know, and monitoring that, and, you know, I think that with with Gen Z, specifically, it could be hard for them to do, to do confrontation, and so that’s why, you know, creating that psychological safety and that constant flow of feedback is so important, crucial, and it’s something that I work with a lot of organizations on, because, candidly, you know, Gen Z kind of, there are skills that weren’t lacking, and I’m not lost on that fact, and that’s why I have, you know, a lot of upskilling sort of workshops that I do on critical thinking and, you know, conflict resolution and self leadership and all these things to really empower them to show up in the way that we want them to show up at work. But also it requires, you know, other generations, to really understand, how do we, how do we manage and engage them? I mean, that’s that’s my that’s my short answer.

Mervyn Dinnen 27:00
Okay, no, that’s fine. That’s fine. Okay, so we’re coming to the end, and it’s been fascinating to talk to you. And I hope listeners have learned something about these people in their business that they’re not 100% sure about. No, there’s a typical old person’s comment. I’m sorry about that, but I mean, before we go, I mean, what’s, what’s the future for you? What are your plans at the moment?

Danielle Farage 27:25
I’m doing a lot of, you know, public speaking. I’m doing internal talent development, I would say, both on the part of Gen Z and helping them with those skills that I mentioned earlier, but also on the part of like managers, how do you really manage this generation? What? What should we know about them? Also recruiters, what should we note in order to recruit them more? On the I do talk a lot about values in that, and then across generations, I’m starting to develop some workshops intergenerationally so with other collaborators, where we actually talk about, you know, how do we upskill in a multi generational workforce, and what types of skills does that require each one of us, no matter your generation? And that’s really exciting, because that’s really an opportunity for different generations to come together and learn together, versus sort of siloing them and and helping to bridge those gaps. So I’m excited about that. And yeah, more, more to come.

Mervyn Dinnen 28:33
That sounds like a topic for another podcast chat.

Danielle Farage 28:36
Definitely

Mervyn Dinnen 28:37
So I shall invite you to come at some stage. Danielle, it’s been a pleasure to talk to you. Ireally enjoyed the chat. Thank you for coming on the show.

Danielle Farage 28:46
Thank you. You

Transcribed by https://otter.ai