We hear a great deal about the millennials, the marketing opportunities they present and the challenges they pose in managing them. Maybe we have focused less on Generation Z.
Well, if one wants to be precise, Generation Z includes persons born between 1995 and 2015, and therefore aged between four and 24 years. In Malta this cohort totals over 100,000 persons and accounts for just over 20 per cent of the population. One thing worthy of note is that 52 per cent of the population aged between four and 24 years are males.
One may think of various events that have shaped this generation in our country. I will pick on just three. First, Generation Z knows Malta only as a member of the EU, with all its freedoms, mainly the free movement of people. For them Malta’s natural place is in the EU and there cannot be much debate about that.
Increasingly their attitudes and perceptions will come to resemble very much, the attitudes and perceptions of persons from Northern European EU member states. They are more likely to feel themselves a citizen of the EU than the rest of the population.
The second aspect is that Generation Z does not know what an economic recession means. They may have read about it as it affected several other countries; but they have not experienced the impact of a recession on Malta, with high unemployment. They have not experienced a situation where there are not enough jobs for the people that want to work. On the contrary they have only experienced a situation where there are not enough people for the jobs available. In this respect they are not much different from the millennials.
Organisational hierarchies are also very likely to be challenged
The third aspect is that many of them grew up playing with their parents’ mobile phones or tablets. They have grown up in a hyper connected world and their preferred method of communication is the smartphone. Research data shows that 45 per cent of 15- to 18-year-olds use a social media platform for at least one hour or more in a normal day. This drops to 22 per cent for 11- to 14-year-olds.
They believe that people their age spend too much time on social media but do not believe they themselves spend an excessive amount of time on social media. Hence one may ask whether they are in denial on this point. On a point related to the use of internet, whereas millennials had to learn about online shopping, Generation Z grew up with online shopping.
This group will start joining the labour market soon and over the next few years will represent the main source for new employees for recruiters. If one were to consider the impact of the three events that I have described in shaping Generation Z, one would immediately appreciate that this generation has information at its fingertips and the independence that technology gives them, means they are willing and able to work from any location and for any organisation in the world. This may make employee retention a bigger problem than it is already at present.
Given this dependence on technology, face-to-face communication does not come that easy to them. Their ability to communicate when interacting with colleagues or their social skills, will be much less than perfect, even though they will have technological skills to make up for that, but at best only partly. Again because of the reliance on technology, they expect responses from others to be immediate, and this could cause frustrations as they wait for decisions to be made.
Organisational hierarchies are also very likely to be challenged. In this respect they are not dissimilar to the millennials. Generation Z will want to be heard, no matter how junior they are, and could be intolerant of persons who do not share their views.
They are likely to have a high desire for change, learning and stimulation, and a lower desire for responsibility and accountability. They are more likely to be results driven than persons who are older than them, and their focus will be to manage output and not their time. All these aspects will necessitate a significant change in the way Generation Z is managed in the workplace.
We will have to wait and see how the economy and the workplace will be transformed by the expectations and attitudes of Generation Z. In many respects we are still learning how to manage millennials. The challenges posed by Generation Z are the joys yet to come.