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.

    • ElleChaise@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      9 months ago

      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.

    • orbit@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      9 months ago

      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.

        • GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          9 months ago

          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.

            • GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              0
              ·
              9 months ago

              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.