Generation Z is a game changer: Why buzzers aren't holding on to work

Zumers are often scolded for quitting quickly, not wanting to stay in the office, and putting personal life ahead of work. But it’s not necessarily laziness: young employees simply have a different view of their careers and relationships with their bosses.

Expert Anna Koneva, HR Director of outsourcing company Mega-Personal, shared with MK in Kaliningrad her view on how Generation Z is changing the approach to hiring and management. In her opinion, it is time for employers to stop seeing zoomers as a problem.

At professional conferences, HR specialists often discuss that buzzers do not want to work and quit after three months.

“Then we return to the office and continue to write vacancies with the requirements of “stress resistance” and “the ability to work in multitasking mode,” notes Anna Koneva.

She's sure Generation Z isn't broken. It called into question the usual system of hiring and management, and for this, the expert believes, he is worth thanking.

Anna Koneva gives an example from practice. A teammate complained to her that the employee closes the laptop at 18:00 and leaves, although the release is under threat. The expert asked if he was paying extra for overtime and received no response.

For buzzers, success has ceased to mean life at work. They saw their parents take on several jobs to pay off their mortgages, and they drew their own conclusions from it. Schedule 5/2 for them is not a dogma, but a relic. Recycling is not a feat, but a sign of poor management.

The expert admits that in many ways they are right. At the same time, she does not call for an immediate transition to a four-day payday.

But the argument “we’ve always worked this way” doesn’t justify overtime. This is a habit, and not the most useful, emphasizes Anna Koneva.

The expert draws attention to the fact that for young employees, corporate culture is not reduced to values on the wall and team building with a rope course. They evaluate it on other grounds: whether it is possible to say to the manager “I disagree” and not get the label of a toxic employee, whether the company maintains a balance of work and personal life in practice, and not only in social networks.

According to Koneva, in interviews, young candidates ask not only about career prospects. They are interested in the attitude of the company to mental health, the presence of a psychologist, the ability to take a day off without explaining the reasons. They also want to know if they will get a call with work questions while on sick leave.

“Employers who are willing to discuss these topics seriously gain an advantage. Those who roll their eyes lose the battle for talent. Today, the market dictates the conditions of the candidate, and this must be taken into account, the expert says.

Anna Koneva is convinced that you do not need to adapt to the buzzers. Stop thinking of them as people from another planet.

“They do not want to work less, they want to work meaningfully. This is a fundamental difference, she explains.

Start, on the advice of an expert, with vacancies. Instead of the wording “family atmosphere” and “friendly team”, she recommends writing specifics: the technology stack, tasks, income level in six months and measures that the company takes so that the employee does not want to leave after three months.

The expert also advises to be prepared for the fact that the person will leave after three or six months. It’s not necessarily a sign of impermanence, she says, but perhaps he’s still looking for his place.

“If a company offers him no growth, no meaning, no respect, he will find it elsewhere.” This is not a betrayal, but a rational decision, says Anna Koneva.

The system that young people are against is the employers themselves. If buzzers force to revise approaches, make conditions more transparent, and relations more humane, then, according to Koneva, this is not a conflict of generations, but the evolution of the labor market.

“If an employee leaves after three months, it is not always his fault. Sometimes it is worth asking yourself what the company offered him, besides salary, the expert sums up.