What Gen Z Will Look For

We know current employees are unhappy. We know it statistically and from our own observations. We’ve learned in this book that many of them are still with their current company only because of job lock. (Remember, job lock is when you have an employee who doesn’t want to be working for you anymore but has to because your company provides their insurance or there are no better places for them to go because of a pandemic. You get the idea. The name sort of says it all, doesn’t it?) So, we also know, statistically speaking, that Gen Z will not tolerate the current work environment as described for you thus far. Gen Z is looking for something different in an employer, and that something different will shape the future of work for everyone. The real question is, what can we do, right now, to build those changes into our organizations so that we can better retain Gen Z employees once we’ve hired them? How do we make our organization a place that employees will feel empowered to recruit others without being prompted, simply because they see the value in being part of the organization? In this chapter, I’m going to attempt to answer both questions.