By Maggie Potter

For the past decade, private industries have spent an inordinate amount of time wondering how to cater to millennials. A vast amount of resources went into studying them, writing about them, complaining about them, and figuring out how to retain them. Now, those same industries have a new challenge, and that challenge’s name is Gen Z.

 There are 65 million members of this new generation, and many of them are now ready to enter the workforce, which makes them a larger group than Gen X. Within a few years, Gen Z will make up a quarter of the total global workforce. Just as younger generations have different expectations for customer service and brand identity, they have different expectations for their workplaces.

Born after 1996, Gen Z is taking the workplace by storm. Attracting them and keeping them on board at your company will require you to make huge changes in your workplace, and those changes could have dramatic effects on the rest of your company. 

Are Gen Zs Just Younger Millennials?

So much time and energy was dedicated to millennials that it’s worth wondering: can we salvage anything from those plans and apply or expand them to Gen Z? The answer is maybe. But just as millennials and Baby Boomers have very different perspectives of work, so do millennials and Gen Zs. Remember that the oldest millennials are now 39, and the oldest Gen Zer is 24. There are even age-gap issues between the so-called “old” millennials and the rest of that generation.

The good news is that there are some similarities between younger millennials and the first wave of Gen Z workers. Both groups are technology natives who largely grew up in connected worlds, and that shapes their whole outlook on life, not just their innate ability to save a Word document as a PDF without breaking a sweat. Both groups also loathe a meeting that could have been an email. Yet, surprisingly, an Accenture Strategy survey found that both Gen Zs and millennials are willing to relocate for the right job. This suggests that corporate-sponsored relocations will remain a staple for attracting top talent.

When it comes to leadership, however, things take a serious turn. Gen Zs aren’t millennials, and they require a different touch if you want to keep them aboard.

What Gen Zs Wants from Their Leaders

“People don’t quit their jobs. They quit their boss.” It’s an old saying that takes on new life for Gen Z. Boomers and even millennials are comparatively low maintenance in regards to what they ask from leadership: they don’t want horrible bosses. For millennials, if they can get mentorship and growth from the deal, that’s great.

One thing that separates Gen Z from those who came before is what they want from their jobs. Gen Z’s status as a tech-first generation equips them with the confidence that they can learn just about anything. They didn’t just grow up with Wikipedia; they grew up with free online classes delivered by Harvard and an entire world at their fingertips. As a result, Gen Zs don’t want to think or learn inside the box, and they want to be allowed to work hard with relative freedom.

Gen Zs don’t look to leaders for answers. They know how to use Google. They’re also not big believers in job titles; they heard their parents complain about their bosses for too long. But they do want leaders who say what they mean, communicate face-to-face, listen to what they have to say, and provide coaching and mentoring for career development so they can eventually leave the nest.

Gen Zs Are Mobile Only, Not Mobile First

The ways technology shapes Gen Zs’ perspectives are diverse, but the way they approach tech at work is important for employers who aren’t yet caught up. Adapt or die has never been more relevant than it is with Gen Z. Gen Zs aren’t interested in mobile-first technologies — They’re mobile-only.

One thing that differentiates them from millennials is their ability to bend the rules of technology: what developers did with supercomputers ten years ago is what Gen Zs are doing with phones today. Mobile-first workplaces are the future of work. Simple things like bots can make a huge amount of basic tasks easier, from using SharePoint to Outlook.

And mobile-first doesn’t just apply to tech. It refers to a general attitude toward work. Gen Zs are willing and happy to work remotely, to grab onto flexible start and finish times, and to automate tasks that don’t require human intervention. For young people, work is not a place but a thing to be doing, and all the mobility options allowed by tech make it available from almost anywhere.

Perhaps the thing you most need to know about recruiting or retaining Gen Z is this: they grew up in a world with access to more information than any one human could consume in a lifetime. That means they know about your company: who works there, who used to work there, and what your culture is like. What’s more, they don’t trust you, so you can take a laissez-faire approach to their demands, but you do so at your own peril. Gen Zs aren’t just coming in huge numbers; they can, and will, be your next big competitor.