Bosses like to complain about Gen Z in the workplace. This career expert thinks it's ‘BS'

CNBC

21-05-2025

New grads are entering the workforce, which means we're probably due for another conversation about how some bosses seem to despise Gen Z workers in the office.
In recent years, CEOs have bemoaned that the youngest generation in the workforce, who are as old as 28 this year, don't want to work, are too casual, and are the most challenging generation to work with.
Some leaders even go as far as saying they avoid hiring Gen Z workers.
Alison Green, who explores all kinds of workplace conflicts through her Ask A Manager column read by millions, doesn't buy the Gen Z slander or that certain generations are "better" workers than others.
"When millennials were the ones who were new to the workforce, they were getting so much crap about their bad work ethic, and that they all needed participation trophies. That was all BS," Green tells CNBC Make It.
"I never encountered that in in real life, and I found that very annoying," she says.
Young workers have always come into the professional world questioning the way things are done in an effort to understand current processes, innovate new ones and make work more accommodating, says Ziad Ahmed, a Gen Z work expert.
"Every young generation has come into the world and workforce and asked hard questions to reimagine what the world can look like," Ahmed previously told Make It.
That said, Green says the experience of graduating from college and starting a first job during the pandemic could have a meaningful impact on the way Gen Zers show up in a professional setting.
Young workers may have missed out on developing crucial social and learning skills while going to school or completing internships virtually, Green says.
It's not surprising that managers are seeing evidence of that and don't know how to manage young workers who have a different early-career experience from their own, she adds.
"The headline really should be: 'People new to the workforce don't know about work,' but that's not an interesting headline," Green says. "They said it about millennials. They said it about Gen X. It's just a fact that when people are inexperienced, you're going to see they're inexperienced."
Green believes the world and workplace changes caused by the pandemic "created a new level of challenge, but I'm not sure the problems themselves are brand new ones," she says.
Some colleges have taken it upon themselves to better prepare young workers for the professional world, like by offering classes to practice making small talk, or boot camps to build career-readiness skills.
Daniel Post Senning, who teaches workplace trainings and is the co-author of the "Emily Post's Business Etiquette" handbook, says requests for his services have skyrocketed in recent years as people return to office and young people start working for the first time. People of all generations can use reminders of how to be courteous, communicate effectively and pick up after themselves in a shared space, he says.
Ultimately, Green says, it's important to view criticism about junior workers and consider: "Is it really a generational difference, or are you just complaining about young people?"
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