Why managers think Gen Z is the toughest generation to work with

Generation Z may have spent the shortest amount of time in the workforce, but they've already built quite the reputation — and the feedback from their bosses is not entirely positive. 

Forty-nine percent of managers say it's difficult to work with Gen Z all or most of the time, according to a recent Resume Builder survey of over 1,000 managers and business leaders. Seventy-four percent even believe Gen Z is more difficult to work with than other generations, and would prefer to work with millennials. 

"We should put a little context around it," says Stacie Haller, the chief career adviser with ResumeBuilder. "People didn't want to work with the millennials after the Great Recession because people thought they were entitled, and now everybody wants to work with them because they have 10-plus years experience. So this is not new, but I do think that Gen Z are coming into the workforce with some different challenges than other generations." 

Read more: Creating culture fit for Gen X, Gen Z, millennials and boomers

According to respondents, the reason they feel Gen Z is difficult to work with is because they lack technological skills, effort and motivation. But those shortcomings hint to deeper, more convoluted issues that date back to the pandemic. Unlike the generations that came before them, many Gen Zs spent the majority of their college careers in a virtual setting and many even have started internships and entry-level jobs online instead of in-person, which could account for the disconnect they experience now with their managers. 

"[Offices] are really where you learn how to interact with people in a professional environment," Haller says. "What was striking to hiring managers about Gen Z was their lack of professional skills — how to take feedback, share information and handle face to face interactions. And what was so interesting is that on the flip side, Gen Z understands that they need a mentor, and they need to understand how to do it, but nobody is really meeting each other halfway in the middle to make this work better."

As for their lack of technological skills, which may be surprising considering for a generation that is tech savvy in their day-to-day lives, the abrupt shift to virtual experiences also affected the kind of technology Gen Z is comfortable with. 

Read more: What Gen Z really wants from the workplace

"The technology they're using is not the same found in a work environment," Haller says. "When you start a job, employers want to know that you understand MS Office like Word or Excel. You need to know how to use certain technologies to function in the workplace, you can't get on like Teams or Slack like you are tweeting with your friends."

The mounting differences have even begun to affect Gen Zs retention rates. Sixty-five percent of managers say they more commonly need to fire Gen Z-ers than employees of other generations, according to Resume Builder, and 12% have even fired a Gen Z-er less than one week after their start date, citing reasons such as "too easily offended" as a top reason. But according to Haller, those statistics may be less about young workers and more telling about broken hiring practices. 

"In my experience all these years as a hiring manager and in staffing, if you keep hiring and firing people you have an issue in your hiring process," she says. "In this case it's almost like they're hiring aliens that they don't know how to interact with, so they just fire them instead." 

Read more: How to recruit Gen Z talent, and why you should

As the workforce moves forward, these issues will have to resolve themselves. Gen Z currently make up 30% of the world's population, according to the World Economic Forum, and by 2025 they're expected to account for 27% of the workforce. Soon, managers won't be able to avoid Gen Z talent. 

The first step, according to Haller, is to simply acknowledge the generational divide within companies, even if it's informally. Then they can put in place formal programs and one-on-ones to open up the necessary conversations. The right kind of conflict resolution could bring to the forefront their positive qualities — being innovative, honest and ethical — and result in a stronger, more resilient workforce. 

"We can't ignore a whole generation of workers," Haller says. "Refrain from sweeping judgments and stereotyping a whole generation because clearly, it's not the whole generation. It's just a matter of smoothing out the rough edges."