Willing to deliver outstanding performance

The next gen­er­a­tion en­ter­ing the labour mar­ket has fair­ly clear ideas of what they want. As a com­pa­ny, you can ac­com­mo­date their ex­pec­ta­tions and in do­ing so re­cruit the best tal­ent.

In the pre­vi­ous ar­ti­cle, our Gen­er­a­tion Z rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Manuel, spoke about the needs of his gen­er­a­tion. One of his main ar­gu­ments was that the tra­di­tion­al ca­reer lad­der has run its course: “Whether it’s an ap­pren­tice­ship as a chef, study­ing IT or a bank­ing in­tern­ship: if the pro­fes­sion you learned no longer ap­peals, you sim­ply change it.” And that would be a shame. Be­cause ac­cord­ing to Manuel, his gen­er­a­tion are will­ing to de­liv­er out­stand­ing per­for­mance – pro­vid­ed they’re hap­py with their work­ing en­vi­ron­ment.

So what can com­pa­nies do to win over Manuel and his gen­er­a­tion? We’ve com­piled some facts that may help:

1. Cre­ate a start-up cli­mate

Gen­er­a­tion Z want to make things hap­pen. Many of them would pre­fer to work for them­selves rather than for a com­pa­ny. As a firm, you can at­tract these peo­ple by of­fer­ing them a cor­po­rate cul­ture that re­wards en­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­it and projects that are di­rect­ly linked to your firm’s suc­cess.

2. Pro­vide op­por­tu­ni­ties

The new gen­er­a­tion is dri­ven more by op­por­tu­ni­ties to get ahead and less by mon­ey. They act strate­gi­cal­ly and want to learn things. And they al­so un­der­stand that this isn’t al­ways as­so­ci­at­ed with more mon­ey.

3. Dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tion?

Al­though Gen­er­a­tion Z are dig­i­tal na­tives, this doesn’t mean that they on­ly want to com­mu­ni­cate dig­i­tal­ly. On the con­trary: they want to com­mu­ni­cate with their su­pe­ri­ors di­rect­ly and in per­son.

4. Hon­est man­agers

Like with di­rect com­mu­ni­ca­tion, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Gen­er­a­tion Z ap­pre­ci­ate hon­esty and au­then­tic­i­ty; they re­gard hon­esty as one of the most im­por­tant man­age­ment qual­i­ties. And would like to be treat­ed ac­cord­ing­ly.

5. No old boys’ club

Fi­nal­ly, a sim­ple point: Gen­er­a­tion Z want to be tak­en se­ri­ous­ly. Gen­er­a­tion Y felt that way al­ready, but even more rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Gen­er­a­tion Z are clear about this de­mand. Work should be a place for ideas and ac­tive in­volve­ment, not one de­ter­mined by rank and age.

Ba­si­cal­ly, all of these points are rel­a­tive­ly easy to im­ple­ment. In re­turn, you’ll at­tract tomorrow’s tal­ent to work for your firm. Not a bad deal.