Leaders,
Talking with my 18-year-old son about the COVID-19 pandemic, he looked me in the eye and asked me if I thought it was going to be OK. I said I did. (And I really do.) Then he told me about "The Plague Inc." It's a game he played on his phone when he was younger. Its objective is to infect the world. I had never heard of it. He said he'd been playing again recently. He explained that you pick the disease characteristics and where you wanted your disease to begin. I asked my 23-year-old neighbor if he'd heard of it. He said he had. He said he played it "all the time in high school." Today, I downloaded and opened "The Plague" on my phone. It says "Kill Everyone! To stop humans researching a cure, they must be killed." It's full of statistics that help the player figure out strategies for beating each country depending on how they react to disease.
While everyone knows the Plague app is not real, what is real is that the workforce's youngest workers, called Gen Z (born between 1995-2012), have grown up with technology, the Internet, and social media. When Gen Zers (like my son and neighbor) were in their pre-teen and teen years, they spent a lot of time online. In fact, they spent more time online than they did sleeping. They checked their phones an average of eighty times a day. They have been interacting on social media with each other for years. Most go online to seek answers rather than asking someone in their normal, everyday life. Online life has become so intertwined with offline lives that the abbreviated phase "IRL" is being used as shorthand for "in real life" to distinguish which experience someone is referring too. All this time being online has caused them to develop differently. As a result, they need to be managed differently. Here are some quick tips from my book "Disconnected - How to Use People Data To Deliver Realness, Meaning and Belonging at Work" for you to consider as you lead your youngest employees.
Providing Community and Connection
- Give more guidance Younger workers are coming to work with less experience making independent decisions. They will need careful instructions for tasks, and they will need more guidance.
- Reassure often Unlike millennials who demanded praise, iGen'ers want reassurance. They are eager to do a good job, but afraid of making mistakes. Offer quick and frequent feedback.
- Understand desire to be bulletproof Rohin Shani, author of The Z Factor and an iGen'er himself explains that his generation wants to be as prepared as possible for the future. Because of this, they want to be able to learn and develop at work. They are looking for companies that will support them and make them "bulletproof for whatever the future holds."
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