Starting a career has increasingly felt like a right of passage for Gen Z and Millennial workers struggling to adapt to the working week and stand out to their new bosses.
But it looks like those bosses aren’t doing much in return to help their young staffers adjust to corporate life, and it could be having major effects on their company’s output.
Research by the London School of Economics and Protiviti found that friction in the workplace was causing a worrying productivity chasm between bosses and their employees, and it was by far the worst for Gen Z and Millennial workers.
The survey of nearly 1,500 U.K. and U.S. office workers found that a quarter of employees self-reported low productivity in the workplace. More than a third of Gen Z employees reported low productivity, while 30% of Millennials described themselves as unproductive.
OMG. A headline that doesn’t lay the blame on millennials and Gen Z?!
I guess it was only a matter time. Millennials are hitting their 40s now. Now we can start blaming whatever-comes-after-Z for everything!
I know right? I just don’t care about these articles anymore, not that I ever really did. We’re all experienced and effective in our own ways.
The youngest Zoomers are still 12 or so. Gonna be a long time before we can start blaming Alphas for the death throes of the Boomers
I’ve seen that when I first started decades ago. The department I was working on was filled with more senior staff and I was the only one in the department under 30.
There was very little in intentional teaching during that time. I’m not talking about training classes, but even basic things. It was just try your hardest and get comments back on your work. There were also cases where it was easier and faster for me to do certain tasks on the computer, but they weren’t used to that idea.
And so you’ve got a lot of bad teachers in the workforce that have been doing their job forever. And because there aren’t that many Gen X, there weren’t that many in the middle ground to teach new staff.
And I feel like some elder millennials are taking the generational trauma of shitty mentoring and carrying it forward like a rite of passage.
Right, there’s a weird amount of romanticization going on here, it seems like, about how things used to be. Or some sort of victimization need.
There’s plenty of things that have gotten worse, like average wages, benefits, minimum education requirements, etc. But this doesn’t seem like one of them.
And I feel like some elder millennials are taking the generational trauma of shitty mentoring and carrying it forward like a rite of passage.
People who never got decent mentoring don’t know what it looks like. It’s rarely intentional, they just believe that’s how it is in the business world.
I’m easily fooled into productivity with a median wage that adjusts with inflation and quantified growth goals.
Boomers would have expected their wages to go up above inflation. Not settle for keeping in line with it.
Right? Inflation raises are not raises. It’s saying you’re no better than last year.
Shit, mine don’t even keep up with inflation and they never have. I’m effectively being paid less and less year over year, and companies wonder why job hopping is so prevalent. It’s unreal!
What? Ridiculous. You want fair pay and non-arbitrary, non-shifting performance metrics? Cold day in h*ck when that happens!
Isn’t it the employee’s job to adapt and fit into the employer, not vice versa?
No, it is up to the employee to so as much as they oblige in their contract.
Because it is not like those employers are going to do more than what is in there either.
your hired! get in the wood chipper… scab.
Perfect example of self-entitlement’ nothing to say so insult.
Real question? If you like companies so much, why are you on Lemmy?
Ten day old account, and going by post history, solely here to troll.
No because the employers goals are diametrically opposed to the workers in a system that requires infinite growth on a limited resources. The workers create the value. Not the employer.
The employee’s job is to deliver value to the business. The business’s job is to enable the employee to deliver that value. Mentorship, fair wages, career growth oppurtunities, etc. Many businesses fail on their end of the bargain. Its no wonder the employees are repaying the effort in kind.
And if no employee is interested in adapting to that employer’s conditions?
"“nOboDy WAnTs tO WoRk AnyMoRe!”
man its almost like it started around the time slavery ended. I wonder what kind of person would say such a thing as though they were entitled to the free labor of others.
Do you make barrels for a living? Do you forge iron with a big hammer? Do you rivet? I would wager not, and this is due to the people who employ people changing with a changing world. Add humans into the equation, and you can see how employers also need to assess that aspect of their operation; changing with the people who themselves change with the world around them.
Changing with the needs of industry is nothing like cowtowing to the needs of some employees that are free to go elsewhere if they prefer.
And the good empoyees who make lots of profit will happilly choose a employer who caters to their needs.
Companies are competing. Workers just gain advatages if more and more are fed up with shit employers.
A job is not a right. It’s a privlidge.
Capitalism requires people have jobs for commerse to work. The whole system falls apart if people dont have jobs. For the sake of its own preservation, it seems like jobs should be a right.
It’s not a privilege. It’s a contract with two parties. If either one of those doesn’t like it, they can go elsewhere.
And most jobs in the US are not contracts unless they are union jobs.
I meant in the colloquial meaning of contract meaning “an agreement between parties to exchange money, goods and services”, not the legal meaning of an employment contract.
That said, it’s unbelievably shitty that most jobs in the US don’t have written documentation about the actual contract that parties engage in and are only word-of-mouth or non-binding bullshit. The US should join the rest of the world in having actual enforceable rights around employment and should quit overregulating unions.
A company is not a right, it is a privilege.
If they do not contribute positively towards society, then we should be obliged to burn them to the ground.
I don’t know if you’re trolling or just don’t get the argument.
If a company needs employees, they have to make the positions that they offer attractive, otherwise their workers will find different jobs. If an employer cannot or will not adjust to a changing labor market, they fail.
Call it Dutch Disease if you want, but that doesn’t change the equation.
Employees aren’t a right either.
I would say it’s neither.
When a job is required to survive, it’s not a privilege.
It isn’t a right. If you need a job to survive, then perform better so you keep it. Simple. Don’t expect the employer to lower their standards just for your benefit. That is entitlement of the worst kind.
Having productive workers isn’t a right. If your company needs productive workers to remain profitable, then pay your employees more so they’ll be motivated to work harder. Simple. Don’t expect workers to lower their standard of living just for your benefit. That is entitlement of the worst kind.
Usually the hard hat goes on at a construction site not on a skull on Lemmy. If you want more pay, go elsewhere, don’t expect an employer to cater to you entitlement.
“No society is more than three meals away from a revolution”
A society that cant take care if it’s own people will collapse into bloody revolution
Oh for christ sake this baloney revolutionary crap…
It isn’t the responsibility of any employer to keep you from being a revolutionary idiot. So go ahead if you want.
Only if the employer is a short-sighted cadre of idiots.
I mean we could all be adhering, still, to the corporate norms of the 1880s but that would be ridiculous.
Nope, this article focuses on just one side however it is and should be a two way mutually beneficial deal, like any successful relationship. Good managers understand their employees and work within business needs to make their people happy.
Relationship only goes as far as you being paid for your productivity. Yes there are different management styles and you are free to choose a job that has a management style that suits you better but bottom line is a job is under no obligation to cowtow to an employee, unless of course it is a union job.
I think you’re both right. Employees are free to choose jobs they like, and employers are free to hire people they like, for the most part. In theory.
Of course, the economy isn’t in great shape, and hasn’t been for almost the entire adult lives of millennials, so it’s not like people really have much of a choice in practice. You work at Soulless Company A, or you work at Soulless Company B…or you starve. Individual job-seekers don’t control the job market.
Similarly, companies don’t have that much of a choice, either. They can’t just exclusively hire senior citizens. They don’t control the hiring pool. It is expensive to hire and train new employees, and infeasible to replace a large percentage of your workforce on a short time scale.
Anyway, if you have a corporate culture that is hostile to the majority of employees under 40, you’ve got a big culture problem. You can’t just dig in your heels and expect two entire generations to come around to your geriatric worldview.
You were doing fine until the last paragraph.
If you see the corporate culture you are in as hostile, leave and find another one if you can. Otherwise, adapt to the situation you are in instead of acting self-entitled.
He’s just saying these companies need to adapt their culture to fit the culture of younger generations or the companies will die with the boomers in a few years.
Culture changes over time, those that refuse to change get left behind, this has always been the way of the world
Personally I’m ok with a lot of companies failing and being replaced with healthier alternatives. In my mind we need to get back to the economy of thousands of smaller businesses rather than 15 mega corps owning everything on the planet.
Yes, I would encourage everyone to take as little shit from their job as possible. Frequent job-hopping has been the norm for millennials, because it’s typically the easiest way to increase your salary.
I think it’s more useful to think in terms of trends than in terms of individuals. This isn’t about one person or one company. One person can leave one company, no problem. Millions of people cannot leave thousands of companies. There’s nowhere else for that many people to go.
It seems more realistic for a small number of companies to adapt to a large number of individuals than vice-versa. If you have one unproductive employee, then they’re a bad employee. If you have hundreds or thousands of unproductive employees, then you are a bad employer.
With all the crap about job contracts, is everybody talking about union jobs or jobs not in the US? only one state in the US is not at-will employment and that is Montana. Yes, at-will states can have unions and employment contracts but contracts outside of unions are rare.
I am assuming at-will employment. But I don’t think unions change the dynamic in principle. They just shift the power balance away from employers. That’s great, but it doesn’t resolve the fundamental issue that there is NOT an abundance of choice.
Then they can enjoy a high turnover rate as the best of best seek employment elsewhere. I’ll never understand this thinking. How do you expect to get anything other than shit employees if you treat them anyway you want? You aren’t the only employeer on earth
Pay peanuts, get monkeys
Who said anything about obligation?
That fact that you would use a word like kowtow to describe a company being willing to meet its employees halfway says a hell of a lot. This is why “nobody wants to work anymore.”
Disagree - there is a degree into which the needs of a managers direct report should be taken into account. Ignoring these needs in full comes with the risk of turnover and productivity loss. It’s a balancing act between business and employee needs. Again you’re taking it the the extreme by saying an employer should kowtow to the employee when the reality is that it should be a good balance in an ideal scenario and not entirely in either direction. A balance leads to the best outcomes for both parties.
In a word? No. Companies need to adapt to changing conditions which includes hiring. An individual person needs to adapt, but the companies need to adapt to cultural shifts. That’s similar to the classic, “if I owe the bank $50k I can’t repay, I have a problem. If I owe the bank $50M, the bank has a problem.”
My pay is barely enough to get by on, so I’m only going to do the bare minimum to get by at work.
Ha yeah I’m old now how do I get a job? A career I mean.
The survey of nearly 1,500 U.K. and U.S. office workers found that a quarter of employees self-reported low productivity in the workplace. More than a third of Gen Z employees reported low productivity, while 30% of Millennials described themselves as unproductive.
Couldn’t this just mean gen x/boomers feel more productive? Doesn’t sound like it really speaks to the output of the employees
Millennials/Gen Z:
- Uses computer to finish day’s tasks in 4 hours, browses internet for remaining 4.
- “Wow, I feel like a useless piece of shit.”
Boomers/Gen X:
- Spends 2 hours reading every single email in full as if they are addressed specifically to them, getting angry that people are telling them useless information. Spends an hour printing & collating papers for the day’s tasks. Spends 5 hours doing the tasks because paper is less efficient. Stays 1 hour extra for scanning/data entry when the whole thing could have been done on the computer in the first place.
- “Gee golly, I sure am swamped.”
Definitely.
I suspect many genx/boomers don’t feel productive either - BS jobs don’t discriminate - but they have probably seen enough layoffs to know when they need to appear busy - when a reporter asks is one of those times…
It’s this actually something that can meaningfully be said of Gen Z / millennials, or it’s just “young people”.
I ask because millennials are not just starting their careers, millennials are in their 30s and 40s. I’ve been in my career more than a decade and I’m a millennial.
I’m also less productive now than before because I have too much to meaningfully accomplish it all, so I say no to a bunch of work but still end up working on random things and executive asks for instead of deep focused work that could really push the company forward. But if you don’t do what an exec wants you get fucked.
Oh my god haha. So relatable. And then they complain about progress on your core tasks for which they hired you. Eh, whenever that happens I point out to them that it’s not in my job description and that I did them a favor. Shuts them up most of the times about the part where I was hired for.
It is often said that the younger generation of workers, namely Gen Z and Millennials, are not as productive as their predecessors. However, the blame for this is often misplaced. It is not the fault of technology or lack of motivation that is crushing the productivity of these workers. Instead, it is their sense of self-entitlement that is causing the problem.
The rise of the internet and social media has led to a culture of instant gratification, where everyone wants everything now. This mindset has spilled over into the workplace, where younger workers feel entitled to promotions and recognition without putting in the necessary effort. They expect to be rewarded simply for showing up, rather than for producing quality work.
This sense of entitlement is not limited to promotions and recognition but extends to the work itself. Younger workers often feel that they are entitled to interesting and meaningful work, without having to do the grunt work that is necessary to get there. They are not willing to put in the time and effort required to develop the skills and experience necessary to take on more challenging work.
Furthermore, this sense of entitlement often leads to a lack of accountability. Instead of taking responsibility for their mistakes or shortcomings, younger workers are quick to blame others or make excuses. They do not see the value in learning from their failures and instead expect to be coddled and protected from any negative consequences.
To address this issue, younger workers need to understand that success is not handed to them on a silver platter. They must be willing to put in the necessary effort and take responsibility for their own success. Employers can also play a role by setting clear expectations and holding younger workers accountable for their actions. By doing so, we can help the younger generation of workers become more productive and successful.
Oh shut the fuck up already. Go and do something age appropriate, like die of an aortic aneurysm.
Wow. You wonder why Gen Z gets such a bad rap. This guy is exhibits A, B, and C.
Instead, it is their sense of self-entitlement that is causing the problem
Comments like this have always sounded so much more entitled to me than a worker expecting a paycheck. Boomers and C suites bitching about their employees’ desire to adequately support themselves on their wages doesn’t strike you as being just a little entitled?
Boomers who bought their house for 20k working part time as kids complaining about the most debt ridden generations in existence.
Its almost like the spending power wages today are so much lower now than they were and therefore so is productivity.
But hey TVs are cheap even though essential goods like houses, food, and school are higher than ever, so fuck them kids right?
Ah, i see. Compplain loud enough and hope for a hand out instead of doing an honest day’s work. How do you guys look yourself in the mirror?
Lol what? So many things have changed have changed since the last two generations entered the labor force. None of which is their fault. First, older generations cashed in their kids futures for a second house and boat in Florida. Second, labor today is vastly different than it was 40 years ago. 80% of work today in the west is services not production. Add in the lose in union protections, and you have a whole generation working at Walmart and McDonald’s type jobs. Third, the purposefully crippling of education. Those in power knew education needed to be wage gated or made so expensive that no one could dig out from under it in order to force educated individuals to work for lower wages. I can go on and on, your take is uninformed. Gen Z and Millennials will change this because we suffered through it and it’s all a lie.
That post said one thing.
#ENTITLED
Isn’t the entitlement on the part of the companies? You are not entitled to hard working staff. You make an offer: “give me 40 hours a week doing this thing and I’ll give you x salary” and people can accept or reject. If people reject that’s up to them. Unlucky, Mr Company.
And if you pay a low salary with very few benefits, you are not entitled to a loyal, hard working employee. In fact you get the employee who accepted your offer and it’s on you to make sure they meet their contractual obligations. If they do, you are not entitled to 100% or their effort or any overtime, sacrifices or anything else not written in the contract.
The fact that millenials and gen z aren’t as willing to stand and take this is a problem for the companies, not us. If you want better employees, treat them better. The days when you get undying loyalty for providing the bare minimum are gone.
And this is before we even look at, say, average salaries vs property prices for boomers vs millenials. Why aren’t we working as hard? Well what difference does it really make anyway?
To address this issue, younger workers need to understand that success is not handed to them on a silver platter.
Ha, you mean the way boomers working a minimum wage job that could buy them a house and support 2.4 kids weren’t handed that on a silver platter?
Was thhe economy different then or do you just find thinking to be to hard sometimes?
Considering the minimum wage (in modern dollars) is about the same as it was in 1945 and now is 5 bucks lower than it was in the 70s, I’d say the economy was pretty different.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1065466/real-nominal-value-minimum-wage-us/
yeah I can’t believe how much I was making as a teenager in terms of like number of eggs I could buy per hour.
Looks like someone found ChatGPT to help them write this.
Yeah it doesn’t read at all like a normal interaction on here would. Checked their profile and sure enough half their posts are AI generated images. Trolls will troll.
Nope, I actually dislike chatgpt. Used it a few times in my community about BKFC though but stopped because of it’s hallucinations.
should’ve just admitted to chatgpt. That paragraph makes you look old and disconnected. You made a lot of assumptions about people you don’t know, and clearly don’t know the current age you’re in. It’s not entitlement or some need for instant gratification. People are actually getting less than they got when you started working.
I’m not going to admit to something I didn’t do. Are you nuts? Why should I??
It would look less embarrassing if you didn’t actually write it, that’s how bad it is.
Go on, criticize the writing instead of the content. That shows intelligence.
I mean, I already did. You just didn’t respond, Mr. Intelligence.
It’s overly wordy and bloviating to say little. Brevity and conciseness show intelligence. Typing paragraphs with absolutely no new ideas or analysis makes you look conceited and aloof.
It’s pretty bad when you type an essay and it reads like AI wrote it.
Found my dad
I’ll bite …
crushing the productivity of these workers
What “crushing” of productivity are you delusionally on about?
https://assets.weforum.org/editor/HFNnYrqruqvI_-Skg2C7ZYjdcXp-6EsuSBkSyHpSbm0.png https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/11/productivity-workforce-america-united-states-wages-stagnate/
I can find any number of sources showing that productivity has been on the rise for decades, and has continued to rise as Millenials and younger entered the job market. There is no “crushing the productivity”.
The rise of the internet and social media has led to a culture of instant gratification … This sense of entitlement
Millenials and younger have gone through their entire school life being told “you need to do well this year at school, to get into the top set next year, to get into a good university to get a good job”. We/they have been told this by every generation above them, for their entire lives. The have followed this, listened to their elders, worked hard through school, sat meaningless exams, gotten good meaningless grades, they have gone to university. They have worked hard their entire lives …
Just to be told, “culture of instant gratification” “you’re entitled” “you’ve not done the grunt work”. It’s selfish of the previous generations to not recognise this.
Your entire comment rings as “needs evidence” to me. To the point I’m not sure if it’s satire or not. You’ve failed to put in any grunt work, evidence anything or source it as anything more than conjecture.
They expect to be rewarded simply for showing up, rather than for producing quality work.
This is the opposite of how I see the world, as it stands. Look at the people calling for maintaining or increasing working hours. Look at the people calling to work in office. It’s the previous generations expecting people to turn up, in office and sit there for hours so they can be paid. They are expecting people to be rewarded simply for showing up.
Look at the people calling for unlimited holiday and reduced workhours, where failure to deliver is a disciplinary issue. Look at the people calling to work from home, and have the quality of their work assessed, not their dress sense or punctuality. Look at the people driving quick delivery, rapid review and peer appraisal of work. These are the people who are focussed on delivering quality, and not getting paid simply for showing up.
Look at the article this thread is based on before making such a stupid remark.
Why would he even need to read the article, if his entire post is responding to your counter arguments? You’re already a step past the article.
Nobody wants to work on their yelling at kids these days.
There’s no way you’re not trolling at this point.
Most intelligent rebuttal I’ve seen. Did you graduate from the Facebook academy for Gen Z Dropouts?
Yep, definitely a troll. No real human would gargle corpo dick like this.
Just like on Facebook. Things get better when you block morons like this.
The same could be said about you. Don’t forget to lick the frenulum.
Wow, 5 paragraphs, with an introduction paragraph and a conclusion paragraph. Looks like something I’d write in high school, except for the topic.
Did you remember to take your blood pressure meds this morning? Cherish them, kids these days can’t afford healthcare, lmao.
Another example of self-entitlement. Go ahead, keep proving my point.
Yeah but are you going to back your statements above up with data or are these just your feelings?
Shouldn’t you be asking that to the articles author?
No, you made a series of claims above without evidence. Let’s start with your claim that instant gratification has spilled into the workplace and is a cause for the problems as you see them.
I think these last few years of geriatric rule is just going to be a lesson of what not to do for when we take control.
By the time these fucking boomers retire we’ll be geriatric too :(
But with the lessons learned from a lifetime of hardship, perhaps we stand a chance of not continuing the cycle. We lived the struggle, the grind, the hustle. It’s just up to us to not inflict it in turn.
A good sign that this is what’s gonna happen is if you look around our generation is the first generation that is trying to work with the next ones to do better which has never been the case before. There is a reason millennials and gen Z are always in the headlines together.
Millennial here. An old one at that. I’m proud of my generation and even more so of gen z. We got your back.
“We’ll be different” - Every generation ever.
These people do realize that boomers used to be the hippies, right?
The cool ones died or retired. What we have left are the cowards, hall monitors and people so boring that even though they can afford to retire they wouldn’t know what to do with themselves so they keep working, keep being in charge, keep shitting up everything.
The cool ones died or retired
That’s not true - a lot of them were also killed or incarcerated by the government through programs similar to Cointelpro. Especially those boomers who were people of color and were active in the Civil Rights Movement
Most people weren’t hippies. They were called counterculture for a reason.
What I mean is that by the time it’s our turn to lead the best decision will be that we’re too old and we should let zoomers run the show lol
If they promise with their actions to stay woke, tolerant to all but the intolerant and respecting towards the planet i don’t care who rules the world.
It will never be “our” turn to lead. Power isn’t based on age, it’s based on wealth.
The next generation of billionaires is no different from the last.
I think (most) millenials and gen z are in pretty good agreement with what policies we want for the future, though. So I’m not that worried.
ITT:
-
“I’m smarter than my boss that’s why I don’t care” “no you’re not, and yes you do.” “Yeah, actually, I am, and no, actually I don’t.” “‘Actually’ they don’t care, which is why you’re complaining about it. The only people that don’t care in this scenario are your boss and me.” “Nuh uh.” “Ya huh.”
-
“This has happened before, it is always like this.” “No it’s not, we’re uniquely smart and capable and they’re particularly not and not.” “Ok, you’re brilliant but no one cares. That must be what’s happening.” “It is!” “It isn’t.”
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“The olds are so old and work culture is bad, we need better work culture.” “What does that look like?” “Doing things I care about when I want to and being paid a lucrative salary for it.” “That won’t work.” “Yes it will.” “Ok, but it won’t. Good luck.”
Sanded it down for you all. These threads were getting a little knotty and overgrown.
-
I’ve been laid off 5 times since I started what was my career over a decade ago. After the second time I learned to always keep a second or third source of income, which meant I never had a day off or a vacation for years. After the 4th time I gave up on corporate jobs but still took a position when a friend offered it to me. This time I will not go back, thankfully my side work of being a handy person landed me a job in the solar industry somehow and the pay is even better than my senior position at the last “career” job.
Cool. What are you doing in solar?
New sun.
Research by economists should not be trusted in matters of employee well-being.
So far most of what I’ve seen is “want to stare at phone a day”, “can’t I work from home?”, “stopped working at the first excuse or (god forbid) difficulty”.
I can’t even understand what you are trying to say. You must be a supervisor.
deleted by creator
yeah, thats pretty dark. maybe some anger issues ?
Most of my career is showing how we could solve problems, being told not to because the morons above me don’t comprehend abstract, being thrown under the bus, finding ways to do what is needed anyways, and only after the fact, after proof is shown that it was the correct thing to do, getting some meager acknowledgement that perhaps I was right amd know what I’m doing.
But it still never causes these idiots to actually trust me the next time. It doesn’t seem to matter who is above me. If they are even slightly older than me, they don’t ever trust people like me.
I see this same thing happen to a lot of my peers my age and younger as well. The high quality individuals suffer because the world is full of idiotic managers.
Quite probably managers have ended up where to they are at due to the Peter Principle:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
They might have been great at their jobs at some point, and kept getting promoted until they couldn’t succeed any more.
This principle helps explain why any hierarchy will eventually be shit.
