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Employers will have to juggle generations

There’s a new generation in town, and it’s one that employers better get ready for, because it’s 23 million strong and will be flooding the workforce by the end of the decade.

Meet Generation Z, confidence-filled youths who don’t want to miss a thing, have the shortest attention span of any generation and aren’t quite as open as their millennial predecessors, from whom they learned that not everything needs to be shared online.

If you try to treat those in Generation Z — born in the mid- to late-’90s, mostly to Generation X parents — like you treated millennials — born in the early ’80s to mid-’90s, mostly to baby boomer parents — it will backfire on you. This generation is unique.

• According to best-selling author and generations expert David Stillman, you won’t find those in Generation Z frequenting Facebook or Twitter as much as their predecessors. Keenly aware of software monitoring, they are more likely to share their worlds on apps such as Snapchat or Instagram. Often dubbed “digital natives,” millennials are much more likely to share their lives in the open.

• Being culturally connected is more important to those in Generation Z, with many more of them suffering from FOMO (fear of missing out) than millennials.

• Gen Zers have grown up with smartphones, tablets, 3-D, 4-D and 360-degree photography, just to name a few norms. According to Stillman, keeping their attention is resultingly tough. Their average attention span is eight seconds, compared with the 12-second attention span of millennials.

• While millennials are driven to succeed by helicopter parents who watch their every move, Gen Zers find encouragement from parents who favor independent thinking, want them to achieve on their own and are fed up with not receiving equal pay for equal success at work.

• According to Forbes, social entrepreneurship is important to Generation Z, a group that is driven to volunteer and choose careers that make a difference.

• Generation Z children were raised in classrooms that focused on diversity and collaboration. Despite this, they tend to be more private than millennials, perhaps as a result of seeing many of the downfalls of previous generations in the Great Recession.

• Because those who are part of Gen Z feel pressure to gain corporate experience early, they are competing with millennials who are more likely to wait to gain that type of experience. The good news for millennials, who are more likely to chase jobs in the corporate world, is that 72 percent of those in Generation Z wish to take what they learn and apply it to their own business, versus 64 percent of millennials who have the same goal.

Matt Stewart is co-founder of College Works Painting.

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