Tell us how you really feel!
A recent report is doing just that, examining what Gen Z workers dislike about their bosses that they may not be willing to share with them face-to-face.
The report from the New York Post discussed several topics with numerous Gen Z workers, finding that they would describe their workplaces as “toxic.”
One worker mentioned in the report was Jessica, 25, who is currently working her second job out of college.
When asked about her boss’s habits, she said one of the more irritating traits her current boss has is dumping his workload on her and yelling at her for talking to HR.
“A lot of the time, he has to do reports, and instead of him doing them, he will get me to do them, and there is no one I can tell to say he is offloading his work to me. A lot of time, I am doing his work, and he’s not doing anything, and that’s just how it is,” she said.
But this experience isn’t a one-off, as others shared similar sentiments of their bosses not carrying, lacking soft skills like emotional intelligence or empathy, and more.
Recently, employers may have shared that it is hard to work with Gen Z employees in a survey last year. Others have shown that older generations think younger workers are soft and fragile.
However, the feeling has always gone both ways.
Jim Harter, chief scientist of workplace and well-being at Gallup, told Fortune that oftentimes, younger workers don’t feel understood, which can directly impact their work and mental health.
“They’re coming to work wanting to build an identity, be inspired, make a difference. And they’ve got a lousy boss that is just critiquing all the time, or worse, ignoring them,” Harter said. “That leads to the condition we call ‘actively disengaged.’ Those people have the worst well-being, as we’ve seen that people who are actively disengaged are more likely to have new incidents of depression.”
Gallup recently released a report that found that only 31% of workers under the age of 35 would describe themselves as “thriving” in the workplace, a four percent drop from the year prior, while another 22% said they felt lonely.
When it comes to what younger workers are looking for, Harter says they want bosses who have weekly one-on-ones with them, provide meaningful feedback, care about their input and ideas, and encourage collaboration on their teams.