5 things HR professionals need to know about Generation Z. Thought leaders share their views on the HR profession and its direction for the future
| Published date | 13 November 2017 |
| Pages | 288-290 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/SHR-08-2017-0051 |
| Date | 13 November 2017 |
| Author | Kimberly Lanier |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Employee behaviour |
5 things HR professionals need to know
about Generation Z
Thought leaders share their views on the HR profession and its
direction for the future
Kimberly Lanier
Kimberly Lanier is based at the
Maritz Motivation Solutions, Fenton,
Missouri, USA.
When millennials entered
the workforce years ago,
management and
leadership experts had a field day
with Millennial madness. New
theories and research emerged
constantly about the youngest
generation, at the time, to join the
workforce. That was then, this is
now – and the workforce today
welcomes Generation Z to the
ranks.
No generation is a monolith, but
there are growing trends of
expectations and preferences that
change as culture and worker
demands change. As with any
generation, engaging Generation Z
will present unique challenges and
opportunities that may change the
world of work forever.
Working to understand Generation
Z may tell leaders something about
the generation, but isn’t meant to
be one-size-fits-all advice for
personal engagement. It’s
important to consider
characteristics emerging as
indicative of Generation Z, how
they differ from their closest
generational relatives (Millennials),
what they want and expect from
work and the implications for HR.
Meet Generation Z
Generation Z is the latest
demographic to round out the five
generations working side-by-side for
the first time in the history of the
modern workforce. In many ways,
Generation Z is manifesting a
continuation and extension of
Millennial demands at work, but with
many key differences, Generation Z
was dubbed the “Anti-Millennials” by
Fast Company (Segran, 2016).
In a New York Times (NYT) essay
introducing Generation Z, NYT
reporter Alex Williams summarized
the slight disagreement between
demographers and marketers on the
beginning and end of the youngest
working generation (Williams, 2015).
Williams wrote that while academia
considers Generation Z-ers born
between the early 1990s and the
mid-2000s, marketers (“who tend to
slice generations into bite-size
units”) mark the 15-year span from
1996 to 2011 – making them
between 6 and 21 years old.
Generation Z currently outnumbers
Millennials by nearly one million,
with an estimated 60 million
American citizens born between the
15-year definition of “1996 to 2011”,
making up nearly a quarter of the
US population.
Strategic commentary
PAGE 288 STRATEGIC HR REVIEW VOL. 16 NO. 6 2017, pp. 288-290, © Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 1475-4398 DOI 10.1108/SHR-08-2017-0051
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