Someone shared this Simon Sinek video and it really hit home, but to me as a GenX, never mind the next two generations.
The TL;DR is that GenZ have watched the last wisps of corporate loyalty evaporate, and almost definitely watch a parent get laid off. They know that “we’re a family” is a sick psyop and that HR is the enemy.
GenX learned that the hard way.
But it made me think about how this shapes people’s views.
My wife uses the “family” analogy a lot and she really lives it, putting staff ahead of herself and looking after them like a mum. But that’s her experience of work.
Her dad ran coffee shops in London. If you work in town you might even know Dilietos. on Fleet street that still bears the family name. There’s a photo in the window of her dad and the two generations before.
It wasn’t just a job for life, it was a job for your kids as well.
Family and business were intertwined.
Mine is more typical of what Simon Sinek describes.
My dad got “early retired” at 52, while I was still at university.
He was the bid manager on some huge projects for a US-owned computer business that swallowed up the UK business he’d started at.
Here’s the crazy bit. He’d worked on a huge bid for Ministry of Defense project, and they kicked him out as soon as it was done, before the response had come back.
You can guess where this is going. They got shortlisted and had to hire him back as a contractor.
I say this because a lot of the time when people get laid off “for no fault of their own” you never know the real story, but this was hard to argue against.
Anyway, the won the eventual bid and he kept his contract rolling into the delivery phase, but the damage was done, trust was broken, and I saw it up close.
So I don’t take it personally when GenZ push for promotions and pay rises they’re not ready for. They’ve learned to get the bag now, because the odds are their loyalty won’t be rewarded.
We accuse them of being dopamine fiends, of wanting the reward before the work, but if your lived experience is that the reward will be taken away from you, what do you do?
Doesn’t it make sense to eat the first marshmallow?
