I am an Xer who manages a small but crucial team at my workplace (in an EU country). I had a lady resign last week, and I have another who may be about to resign or I may have to let go due to low engagement. They are both Gen Z. Today it hit me: the five years I’ve been managing this department, the only people I’ve lost have been from Gen Z. Clearly I do not know how to manage Gen Z so that they are happy working here. What can I do? I want them to be as happy as my Millennial team members. One detail that might matter is that my team is spread over three European cities.
Happy to provide any clarification if anyone wants it.
Edit. Thanks for all the answers even if a few of them are difficult to hear (and a few were oddly angry?) This has been very helpful for me, much more so than it probably would have been at the Old Place.
Also the second lady I mentioned who might quit or I might have to let go? She quit the day after I posted this giving a week’s notice yesterday. My team is fully supportive, but it’s going to be a rough couple of months.
My company has struggled with this too. We’ve lost all the Zs we’ve hired within the first few months, and we were deliberately trying to mentor them so they could gain the professional skills they were very clearly lacking on hiring. I invested so much of my time training them on how to write an email, how to write a document using complete sentences, how to proofread a document, and how to be in a meeting (4 different Zers individually, who could not do any of these things without significant hand-holding).
Once we were happy that they were up to speed and on the same level as the rest of the team, they left. Consistently their reason was “thank you for giving me the skills I needed to get a better job.” Which, great! I guess. But that leaves me pretty stumped. How am I supposed to train new team members knowing that they’ll leave at the first opportunity? I’m not a manager, so it’s not really my problem, but ya, it’s frustrating for this elder millennial who just appreciates having a job that isn’t exploitative.
Those “better jobs” likely just pay more. The answer is to pay people what they’re worth when they’re worth it or your competitors will.