The art of managing Gen Z isn’t the mystery it perhaps was. Many people born between the mid-90s and late-00s are now firmly settled in the workplace. There’s now a wealth of research on how best to work with Gen Z—for example, our own survey with Eight Roads on the Young Generation in Tech (YGIT).
There are some broad challenges for employers planning how to work with Gen Z, for sure. But for forward-thinking employers, they also provide opportunities. Offer structures and benefits that reflect their needs, and they’ll consider you a far more attractive proposition.
Professionally speaking, things like secure pay, opportunities to grow, and support to improve influencing and persuading skills are high on Zoomers’ lists (as well as training on platforms like Teams and Slack, which they may be unfamiliar with).
However, you can also create greater engagement by meeting more personal needs. Gen Z is more engaged and motivated in the office, looks for immediate feedback, and wants to share and feel part of your overall mission and goals. In turn, Gen Zers want you to actively improve their wellbeing and create an environment where diversity isn’t just supported—but promoted.
So, how can you manage Gen Z? All together, it can look overwhelming. But it doesn’t have to be. Bob makes managing Gen Z employees simpler. Totally customizable, it’s bursting with features and people data that help you recruit and retain Boomers, Gen X, and Millennials. Excitingly, it’s also been built to engage with a younger cohort that’ll make up 30 percent of the workforce by 2030: Generation Z.
Let’s have a look at how Bob supports HR strategies to engage and retain Gen Z.
Bob supports professional development the Gen Z way
The YGIT report showed that 37 percent of Gen Z felt a promotion would encourage them to stay with their current company more than a better compensation package (30 percent). Research also shows that Gen Z’s brains have evolved to process information faster. As a result, they prefer constant feedback.
This calls for a step-change in professional development, as many managers don’t have the tools or training to guide Gen Z direct reports effectively. In response, Bob’s Talent Module offers a comprehensive suite of performance, mentorship, and training features.
These features empower your managers to become more hands-on with their reports’ growth. In the other direction, your employees come to see their managers as a conduit for success. All of which strengthen what are arguably the most important professional relationships in your organization.
- Create structured performance management. Arrange reviews as often as you wish to measure growth and performance clearly. Set individual and team KPIs or OKRs in Bob for the clear career signposting that Gen Zers crave.
- Schedule regular 1:1s. Managers can book dedicated time to properly mentor their reports and provide a forum to discuss goals, performance, and career paths. In tandem, this also ensures Gen Z gets the attention they deserve.
- Integrate with learning management systems (LMS). Compatible with platforms such as HowNow and Auzmor, it’s easy to enter courses, classes, and milestones into employees’ timelines and smoothly coordinate training and certifications.
- Celebrate success. Managers can post Shoutouts and Kudos on the Bob homepage for everything from passing a professional exam to a job well done on a big project or something else entirely. These public peer-to-peer acts of recognition tell Gen Z (and others) they’re appreciated.
- Run surveys. Bob allows you to run targeted or company-wide surveys that help you gauge employees’ happiness at work, assess their satisfaction with their team or department, and canvas their thoughts on opportunities for learning and growth.
These features make Bob indispensable to Gen Z, helping with retention. But more importantly, it gives your HR professionals and managers the tools to help their teams realize their potential. In particular, they can remind Gen Z that the business understands their needs, is open to their opinions, and considers them indispensable, too.
<< See how Bob supports professional development >>
Bob makes diversity and inclusion your superpower
48 percent of Gen Z feel they represent a “racial or ethnic” minority—the most ever. So it’s no surprise they expect employers to champion DEI&B. In fact, 83 percent say an employer’s commitment to diversity and inclusion is significant when choosing where to work.
Key to this is Gen Zers’ sense of belonging. They want to feel accepted for who they are in the workplace and among their peers.
However, diversity metrics can be difficult to track. Sometimes, feedback can be collected ad hoc. At other moments, employees can feel that nothing will change, even if they share their experiences.
This is where Bob can help. You can create safe spaces for people to voice any concerns while using a variety of features to enhance your DEI&B practices and prove you care about and want to celebrate your employees’ individuality.
- Set and monitor DE&I goals. Bob’s advanced analytics and DE&I dashboards can pinpoint discrepancies between your company’s stats on the ground and your wider diversity and inclusion goals.
- Personalize employee profiles. Help your people to express what’s important to them by providing the flexibility to define pronouns, name pronunciation, hobbies, and more in their official employee profiles.
- Run DEI&B surveys. Bob gives employees a direct and private channel to your HR team. This makes it easy for you to track their opinions, collate feedback on your practices, and gather ideas on where you can improve.
- Use Your Voice as a safe and anonymous space. Located at the bottom of the Bob homepage, Your Voice is secured with leading encryption technology so employees can speak freely about any general or personal concerns.
<< See how Bob boosts your DEI&B programs >>
Bob supports healthy cultures by building communities in the workplace
Effectively the world’s first COVID-impacted early careerists, Gen Z wants to make up for lost time in terms of building relationships in the workplace.
Their sense of disconnection likely evolved from lockdowns and possibly plays into the fact 54 percent are “not engaged”, with most Zoomers saying they don’t feel close to co-workers, managers, or employers. It may also be why they value a strong company culture and community.
For employers, this calls for more face-to-face working and socializing—unfortunately, just as the wider distribution of workforces makes it tricky to have “watercooler” moments where colleagues share stories and ideas.
Concerningly, YGIT found that 37 percent of Gen Zers felt they either didn’t have enough opportunities to build relationships through work, didn’t spend enough time in the office, or both. But it’s not all doom and gloom. Bob’s culture tools can have a hugely positive effect in this area.
- Make it easy to connect. From personalized onboarding to profile pages where you can create custom fields for things like “How to work with me” and special skills and open the door to mentoring—Bob helps everyone build lasting relationships.
- Encourage recognition. With Bob’s Shoutouts, Kudos, and awards badges, you can instantly celebrate colleagues’ achievements and prove their efforts are appreciated.
- Create clubs. Extra-curricular activities are arguably the most powerful way of building morale. Bob’s Clubs feature lets you set up hobby and interest groups so your people can spend time outside work with like-minded peers.
- Run pulse surveys. Because all your people use Bob, it’s the best channel to promote and manage wide-ranging employee questionnaires. Bob’s Pulse surveys give you a detailed assessment of your workplace culture and social initiatives.
<< See how Bob supports healthy cultures and community building >>
Recommended For Further Reading
Employ a Human Capital Management platform tailored for Gen Z employees
Bob has lots of the answers to the question of “how to lead Gen Z.” Moreover, while Bob makes working life better for all generations, many of its features have been developed principally with Gen Z in mind.
This includes key aspects of the employee experience that Gen Z hold dear—their professional development, commitment to diversity and inclusion, and appetite for community.
Bob empowers Gen Z to discover upskilling opportunities, keep track of their performance, and get instant congratulations on a job well done.
In turn, it’s a portal to better workplace relationships. A tool that helps Gen Zers feel more confident in who they are, opens the door to mentoring, and suggests memberships to clubs that go beyond the professional sphere to enrich their everyday lives.
On the other side of the coin, Bob also makes it easy for businesses to manage Gen Z. Use Bob’s Analytics to see what you’re doing well, plus where you might need to invest in recruitment and retention. Because Gen Z’s impact on your organization is only going to increase.
From Shelby Blitz
Shelby is the Director of Content at HiBob. She's passionate about the written word and storytelling. In a past life, she was a music journalist. When she's not writing and editing you can find her baking sweet treats in the kitchen.