The workplace can be a tricky place to navigate. Almost everything we do at work—identifying the experts, managing tough feedback from a boss, figuring out how to work in teams made up of different personalities—comes down to our ability to manage relationships. And to do so, we need savvy social skills.
Most employees acquire those skills over time—by learning from their nonwork relationships, watching how colleagues behave in the office, and by seeing what happens when they stumble in their own workplace interactions.
But the newest workplace generation—Gen Z—is unlike anything we’ve seen. Through a combination of having fewer real-world relationship experiences, spending their education years in remote environments, and learning to communicate largely through asynchronous methods, these 20-somethings have missed opportunities to develop the skills needed to navigate the complex world of work.
The result is that many are woefully unprepared for surviving—let alone thriving—in their jobs.
We already can see what this means for both employees and the organizations that hire them. For one thing young employees are struggling to fit into these organizations. There is a lot of turnover, because new hires who don’t acclimate don’t last long.